


A Walk-on Part in the War

by blue_morning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Africa, Alternate Universe, BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), Boko Haram, Camels and crocodiles, Dean gets shot a little bit, Dean/Cas Big Bang, Destiel - Freeform, Doctor!Cas, Enemies to Lovers, Engineer!Dean, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Medecins sans frontieres, Mystery, Sahara Desert, doctors without borders, they do not hit it off at first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 15:21:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12684534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_morning/pseuds/blue_morning
Summary: Dean Winchester is a petroleum engineer working in Chad, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. He keeps running into the attractive, but infuriating, Dr. Castiel Novak, who's in Africa working with Doctors Without Borders. Fate throws them together, and against his better judgement, Dean starts to develop feelings for him. After several mysterious coincidences and run-ins with the private army of a local warlord, Dean is sure that Cas knows more about the kidnappings of village schoolgirls than he’s saying. As Dean is drawn further into the mystery, and the desert, he doesn’t know if he can trust this man he’s falling for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all I want to thank Spoopernaptime for the amazing art he made for this story. You can see it on [Tumblr](http://spoopernaptime.tumblr.com/post/167330436306/art-masterpost-for-dcbb-2017-posting-a-few-hours)  
> Thank you for bringing my story to beautiful, vivid, colourful life.
> 
> Thanks to my betas and cheerleaders: Janet, Nat, Speary and Dani. You made this story so much better. 
> 
> This whole thing started out as an autocorrect error in a group DM when I meant to type 'chef au'' and it came out as "Chad au' and I swore one day I'd actually write a Chad au. So thanks to the Agincourt Agitators for their patience and support. Here ya go, as promised: the Chad fic. <3
> 
> Thanks to Jojo and Muse for making it all so effortless to take part in this challenge.
> 
> Title from _Wish You Were Here _by Pink Floyd.__

Dean Winchester fans himself with a paperback book as he walks through the Abéché marketplace, narrowly avoiding a donkey laden with unfamiliar vegetables. Ducking under the covered walkway to escape the oppressive heat of the April sun, he blinks at the sight of a dark-haired man dressed incongruously in a long tan trench coat passing through the same doorway Dean is heading for—the only place a foreigner can get a drink in this mostly Muslim town.

Pausing inside the door of the bar, Dean lets his eyes adjust to the gloom. A long, scarred wooden bar stretches the length of the back wall, tables and chairs scattered in front of it. Booths, separated by intricately carved wooden screens run along the left wall. A few lamps hang from the ceiling between the mandatory Casablanca-esque fans stirring the coolish air. The bartender stands behind the bar reading a newspaper, his white _jalabiya_ a bright spot in the dim room.

“Dean,” he says, looking up and smiling, “It’s been too long, my friend.” 

Dean crosses the room and climbs onto a stool, dropping his copy of _Good Omens_ on the bar. 

“Beer, please, Albert,” but Albert has already popped the cap off a bottle and is setting it down in front of him. Dean tips the bottle up to his mouth. The beer is cool, but not cold enough. But God knows he’s gotten used to that during this last year in Africa. He looks around and sees the trench coat guy, at least he thinks it’s him, sitting at one of the booths with two other men. He’s in shirtsleeves now, speaking French with his companions. French and Arabic are the languages of Chad, and Dean knows enough of the former to make himself understood here. As for the latter, he can pick out a word here and there, otherwise he’s hopeless.

Kansas born with a geological engineering degree from KSU, and most of his working life as a petroleum production engineer (so far) in Oklahoma and Texas with a brief foray up to Alaska, and a wild summer in the Foothills just outside of Calgary, Alberta, means that Arabic is not something he’s even conversant in or with. English is the language of science, so communication at work is not a problem. He thinks that maybe some language lessons are in order though if he’s going to take any more contracts in north Africa or the Middle East. Though learning a new language at 35 isn’t going to be any kind of a picnic.

Albert interrupts his thoughts, asking him if he’d like anything other than the beer. “They’re going through the good stuff very quickly,” he says, gesturing with his chin at the sole occupied booth. “If you want any Crown Royal, you had better have some now.” Albert’s English is accented from learning it in Lagos, so he sounds faintly British. 

Dean nods his acceptance and Albert pours a shot of the Canadian rye whisky for him. He has no idea where Albert sources his eclectic collection of liquors. Last time he was through here it was Glenlivet, the time before that it was two bottles of Stoli that Albert had put away for him, telling two Russians that had found their way into this small unnamed bar, that the best he could do for them was some sketchy mass-produced gin. Dean grins at the memory. The hangover had been epic, though. Dean asks Albert about his family and settles back to hear the older man’s stories.

The voices are getting louder from the booth. “Cȃlice! Parle-moi pas comme ça!” _Fuck! Don’t talk to me like that!_ Dean translates to himself. Well okay then, things are getting interesting. He turns for a better look. They’re Canadian, Québécois; he recognizes the slang. They’re a long way from home. Trench Coat, as Dean’s been thinking of him, shushes the yelling man with the offer to buy another round. He slides out of the booth giving Dean a better view of his companions. Foreigners here are almost always associated with the oil fields, and these two seem to be no exception. Roughnecks, by the look of them.

Dean shifts his gaze to the man now coming towards the bar, and nearly chokes on his beer. He looks to be a few years older than Dean, tall, near Dean’s height, and leanly muscled, a wilted white dress shirt tucked into black suit pants, so not the wardrobe for Chad in the spring. Abéché isn’t true desert, it’s in the Sahel, the more temperate savannah zone, but the temperature reaches the high 80s during the day. It’s his face that stops Dean, with his bottle at his mouth. Piercing blue eyes under dark hair, a nice nose over chapped pink lips, a sharp jawline. _Gorgeous_. Dean swallows as the man approaches the bar.

“Deux bières et une autre bouteille du Crown Royal, s’il vous plaît” 

Albert flicks a look at Dean, who shrugs. The bartender uncaps two beers and puts them on the bar along with the whisky bottle he’d just filled Dean’s glass from. The man picks them up and heads back to the booth. He looks as good walking away as he did coming up to the bar. Dean raises his eyebrows to himself and picks his book up from the bar, opens it and begins to read while he sips his beer.

But he finds he can’t concentrate, his attention pulled back to the booth where the dark-haired man is pouring shots for his companions. The French is fast and colloquial, Dean’s only catching every third or fourth word. Not like he’s trying to eavesdrop, it’s just that they’re loud. 

“J'MEN CȂLICE!!!” _I don’t give a fuck_ ,” Dean’s brain helpfully supplies. Trench Coat is on his feet now, voice raised. It’s getting ugly in the booth. Dean looks for Albert, but he’s not behind the bar, probably in the storeroom. Dean sighs and puts down his book before standing and walking towards the booth.

As he gets closer, one of the roughnecks, who’s also standing now, surges across the table, grabbing the attractive stranger by the front of his shirt and cocking his other fist back, ready to punch.

“Whoa there, buddy,” Dean says as he catches the guy’s arm before he can connect. He thinks to himself it’d be a shame to let the guy mess up such a pretty face. The man snarls at Dean and twists in his grasp. Dean counters by twisting his arm up behind his back, and pushes him face down onto the table. Bottles and shot glasses fly everywhere. Trench Coat is placating the other man, but his French is coming too fast for Dean to follow. The other man, still seated in the booth, puts his hands up in front of his chest, defensively.

“Let him go.” Trench Coat says to Dean in English. His voice is low and gravelly, and under other circumstances Dean would stop and appreciate the way the deep timbre is affecting him south of his belt.

“Seriously?” Dean is pissed. “Did you miss the part where he was gonna clock you? A thank you would be nice about now.”

”I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help. You can go now.” The blue-eyed man glares at Dean.

Dean is incredulous. “Fine.” He lets go and steps back, breathing heavily. The man straightens up and curses at Dean but doesn’t push it, he brushes at the beer on his shirt. Trench Coat, ignoring Dean completely, pulls some bills out of his wallet and tosses them on the table. Grabbing his coat, he herds the other two men towards the exit. 

Dean goes back to his seat. Albert is standing behind the bar. He must have seen at least part of what happened because he sighs heavily and grabs a broom before heading over to the booth.

Dean picks up his book, but puts it down again almost immediately. His concentration is shot. Instead of words on the page, all he can picture is blue eyes. All he can hear is the scorn in that deep voice telling him, in essence, to fuck off. 

The guy’s an asshole, it’s obvious. But despite that, Dean finds that the lyrics of an old Joni Mitchell song are rolling around in his head, a plaintive snippet of lost opportunities:

_Hey, where you going_  
_Don't go yet_  
_Your glass ain't empty and we just met_


	2. Chapter 2

Dean spends the next few days at the small house he rents in Abéché taking care of paperwork. He’s been working for a small U.S.-Dutch consulting company out of Tulsa for a year now, subcontracted by Exxon to maximize oil and gas production. He’s spent the past two weeks in the southern part of the country around Doba, monitoring injection-flow rates in Exxon’s oil fields. He runs the data he collected on-site through the modeling software, writes up the report with his recommendations, and emails it off to head office. He leans back from his computer and stretches his arms behind him, working out the kinks in his shoulders. 

Abéché is one of the few places in Chad with internet coverage, so he has the luxury of personal email along with the work-related stuff. He scrolls through his inbox. An email from his brother Sam, with photos attached of him and his wife Eileen with their four-year-old daughter, Alex. Dean smiles, she’s gotten bigger and cuter. 

All the rest is work related: a reminder to submit time sheets, a reminder to renew his first aid training, an alert about increased militant activity in the north of the country. Violence has been reported close to the lease blocks that Exxon holds up in the northeast near Chad's border with Libya and Sudan. Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist group based in northeast Nigeria, has been expanding operations, moving into northern Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. Though they mostly operate in the southwest of the country, around Lake Chad, there have been reports of raids coming south out of Libya in the northeast prefectures. Seven schoolgirls have been kidnapped in the past few months, two just the week before, and the army is on high alert.

Well, isn’t that just perfect. He’s headed up to the oil fields smack dab in the middle of the alert zone in a couple of days. His email notification chimes and he opens a new message from his boss. It seems they’re taking the alert seriously. He’s being assigned security for his trip up north. _Just fucking peachy._

It takes another day to get his equipment ready to be shipped south to the capital at N’Djamena and pack for his trip north. He drops in at Albert’s one night and refuses to admit to himself that he’s disappointed when Trench Coat doesn’t appear.

On the Monday morning that he’s slated to leave, Dean is up and sullenly working on the third mug of coffee of the day. There’s a knock at the door and he opens it to see a tall man with a neatly groomed beard standing there.

“Dean Winchester?”

“Yep.”

“Hi, I’m Victor Henriksen from Field Security International. You ready to go?”

Dean’s impressed in spite of himself. Field Security is one of the less sketchy private security companies operating on the continent. Nothing but the best for Exxon subcontractors apparently.

“Yeah,” he answers, “give me a minute.” Dean rinses his mug and puts it in the sink. He picks up his duffle and laptop case, makes sure his satellite phone is in his pocket, then grabs his jacket and follows Henriksen outside. 

A battered-looking Range Rover, its roof rack piled high with gear, is parked next to a similarly burdened Land Cruiser, two men standing next to it. Like Victor, they’re dressed in sand-colored camo, and they’re armed. Victor does the introductions.

“Dean Winchester, this is Félix Badeh and Youssef Oueddei. Security and Asset Protection.” Both men nod. Félix is the younger of the two, in his late twenties probably, stocky, with a round face and an easy smile. Youssef is older, easily in his late forties, whip thin and looking none too impressed. His black hair is cropped close to his skull, a stripe of white stretching across the back of his head like someone had chalked it there.

When Victor motions Dean to the Range Rover, he stows his gear in the back seat and swings into the passenger seat. Victor gets in the driver’s seat, and pulls away onto the road, the other car following. They bounce through the streets of Abéché and head north. 

“Have you been here a long time?” Dean asks.

“In Chad? Four years now. But before then, South Africa. I left the U.S. ten years ago to take this job. How long have you been in Chad?” 

“About six months. And before that, Cameroon, for five months.”

“Your first time in Africa?”

“Yeah. I like it here. So much to see. I’m hoping to get a chance to see some of the desert. I keep expecting adventure, but it’s just been work. Might was well be in Kansas, except for having to check for scorpions around the wells.”

Victor laughs. “You’ll get a chance to look around when we get to Faya-Largeau. But adventure? Be careful what you wish for.”

***

The next two days are surreal. They head through the savannah, following a road whose paving disappears at the city limits to become not much more than a rough track. Dean snaps pictures of giraffes eating leaves off spiny acacia trees to send to Sam. Their little convoy has to stop once, near sunset, as a herd of antelope cuts across in front of them.

The city left far behind them, they camp that night under the biggest sky Dean has ever seen. The Milky Way cuts a glowing path across it, and, when the campfire gutters and goes out, Dean lies in his sleeping bag and looks up at the Big Dipper hanging low over the northern horizon. Kansas seems very far away.

Breakfast in the morning is perfunctory. Youssef brings flat cakes of bread spread with soft cheese from the Land Cruiser and they eat quickly, washing it down with mint tea. Félix fills the tanks of both cars from jerrycans, the metallic noise loud in the morning silence. Afterwards, they get back in the vehicles and continue north. 

The country changes from flat grassy plains to low hills, barren of vegetation, and they begin to climb. The two trucks make good time and move steadily into the Sahara. They don’t see a living soul or anything alive at all except for thin grasses burnt by the sun and the inevitable thorn trees. Dunes appear, scattered at first, and then more common. Soon they have to steer around them, using GPS to navigate back on their path. The cars pass the village of Salal, one of the tiny capitals of the _Anakaza_ , a Toubou tribe, the small green oasis a bright jewel supporting camel breeding and herds of gazelles. Lunch is a hurried affair, sandwiches and tea eaten while the trucks are refuelled. They push on into early evening before they stop for the night. Setting up camp between two dunes, Dean’s amazed that even in that featureless sea of sand, Youssef manages to find enough small sticks and twigs of acacia to get a small fire going, enough to boil water for tea. They empty the cooler of cold meat and fruit with flatbread and then lay their sleeping bags out on the sand in the lee of the trucks. Dean sleeps like the dead, and dreams of his brother Sam, and his own high school girlfriend Rhonda, and, inexplicably, Trench Coat from Albert’s bar. 

In the morning, they set out again through the sea of dunes that Victor tells Dean is called an _erg_. Victor drives skilfully, keeping to the bottom of the valleys and threading his way among the dunes. Dean wonders how he knows which way to go, but Victor doesn’t seem worried. He passes the time telling Dean about the different types of sand in the Sahara. 

‘This isn’t too bad. _Fech-fech_ is the worst.”

“ _Fech-fech_?”

“Sometimes at night, especially in winter, moisture condenses out of the air and dew forms on the surface, making a hard crust on top of the soft sand. Driving on that is okay if you keep moving, but if you stop you’re likely to break through and go down to your axles.” 

Dean’s glad Victor is going to be with him all the way up to the northern lease blocks. He’s good company, easy to talk to and knowledgeable about the country. 

Early the next afternoon they reach Faya-Largeau, the oasis brimming with date palms. They drive across the soft sand through a gate in the walls surrounding the southern part of the town. A caravan of camels, carrying salt, Dean presumes, are collected outside the gate, white-robed tribesmen, maybe Bedouin or Tuareg, stand around talking. Dean watches them until they’re out of sight, the Range Rover piloting through narrow streets that are more like a warren of passages bounded by whitewashed mud-brick walls. Doors are set into the walls at irregular intervals, the occasional one standing open to reveal a courtyard and living space beyond. Every so often they pass an open space where goats are penned, or chickens scratch at the dry ground. A spiderweb of electrical wiring stretches overhead.

Victor pulls up in front of a section of wall with a wooden gate standing open revealing a courtyard full of date palms with a small fountain in the middle.

“The Auberge Emi Koussi,” Victor says, “Your home in Faya.” Dean recognizes the French word for ‘inn’ and the name of a volcanic crater in northern Chad.

“Let’s check in and then go get something to eat,” Victor says, and Dean is down with that plan. He climbs out of the Range Rover and stretches before following Victor into the auberge. A few minutes later he’s shown into his room, a spartan chamber containing a bed, an armoire, a chest of drawers, a desk with a chair, and a shuttered window looking out into the courtyard. He unpacks his duffle, and heads to the front door to wait for Victor.

Victor shows up a few minutes later with Félix and Youssef, and Youssef leads them down the twisting streets, past the market, to a restaurant he knows called Chez Elyse. They enter, stopping just inside the door to let their eyes acclimatise to the dim interior. 

The room is half full, probably about twenty men and a few women sitting at the low tables that are scattered around the floor. There’s an empty table near what looks like a bar at the back of the room so they sit down. Youssef orders food in swift Arabic and Dean heads to the bar to order beer for the table. He stops for a moment to get his wallet out of his pocket, and when he looks up, there’s someone standing between him and the bar. A dark-haired someone. A strangely familiar dark-haired someone. 

The man turns and Dean can see his face. It’s Trench Coat.

“You!” Dean says.


	3. Chapter 3

Trench Coat glances at him, puzzled, but then a look of recognition crosses his face, changing quickly to annoyance. “You’re a long way from Abéché,” he says, in that gravelly voice Dean remembers so well. It’s faintly mocking.

“I could say the same for you.”

“I get around.”

“Yeah, I get that. Is being rude to people in bars all over Chad a hobby for you?” Dean removes some money from his wallet, which he stuffs back in his pocket.

“I didn’t need you being concerned with my personal safety at Albert’s. And I can handle myself here just fine, thanks.” His eyes are as blue as Dean remembers. And just as angry.

Dean snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just trying to order a beer.” With that, he turns away and catches the bartender’s eye and orders beer for the table in French. The man hands him two large bottles and some glasses, and by the time Dean figures out how to carry it all back to the table, Trench Coat is gone. _Good riddance_ , Dean thinks.

They end up eating lamb and sticky rice. A bowl of dates follows, no doubt courtesy of the date palms that provide the oasis town with its most valuable resource. After two days on the move, it’s pleasant to sit still and enjoy the food. They spend a few hours there and it’s nearly midnight when they retrace their steps through moonlit lanes back to the inn. 

They stand outside in the courtyard near the fountain, while Félix and Youssef have one more smoke before heading in.

“I need to talk to some people at the prefecture tomorrow morning before we head out.” Victor says. “I want to get the latest news on what the activity is in the area before we go out to the lease block.”

“Activity?”

“Boko Haram,” Victor answers. Dean remembers the email he received a couple of days ago. ”They’ve been coming south out of Libya, and east out of Niger. They tend to raid the areas for a few days at a time and then head back to their home territory. Depending on what I hear at the prefecture, we might head out to the lease blocks later tomorrow or wait a few days.” 

Youssef makes a dismissive sound and drops the end of his cigarette on the ground and grinds it under a heel. Victor turns to him, “You think we won’t be going?” Youssef responds with a flurry of Arabic mixed with French. Dean looks puzzled.

Félix translates, his English accented with French. “At the restaurant the talk was about two school girls missing since last week. Everyone’s on edge wondering if they’re coming back. Livestock has gone missing too -- goats, camels too. I think the Boko Haram are still in the area. There’s talk of Mashaya. That it’s his crew.”

“Mashaya?” Dean asks. 

It’s Victor who answers. “Mashaya. It means ‘the Walker.’ He’s half legend, and all the stories about him are blown out of proportion.” Youssef glares at him and spits on the ground. It’s a pointed comment on Victor’s assessment of Mashaya.

Victor rolls his eyes and continues. “He’s a local warlord, from the Toubou tribe — went to school in England. He came back after and took up with a splinter group of the Boko Haram. He and his crew have been raiding for a couple of years now. They come in riding Land Cruisers armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers. They steal anything useful. Lately they’ve been kidnapping too; school girls, like down in Kenya, brides for the ‘soldiers’ and foreigners for ransom. He’s more about the money than the ideology.”

It sounds far-fetched to Dean. Things like that don’t happen in his world. But this isn’t his world. They all fall silent for a bit, and then Félix wishes them a good night and goes in, followed by Youssef. Victor turns to go into the auberge, but stops and waits for Dean.

“You go ahead,” Dean says. I’m going to sit out here for a bit, enjoy the night air.”

“Okay,” Victor says and heads for the door, “but stay in the courtyard. It’s not safe to wander the streets of Faya late at night.”

Dean makes a face to himself. Victor sounds all Obi-Wan: _the Jundland Wastes are not to be travelled lightly_.

“Got it. Staying in the courtyard.” And he does. At first. He goes and sits on the bench next to the fountain. It’s dark in the courtyard, the moon’s past full and waning. He can pick out Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. He’s looking at the north star when he hears it: shouting coming from the other side of the courtyard wall. Dean gets up and goes to the open gateway. He hears shouting again, a ways down the narrow, walled-in street. It’s Arabic mostly, a word or two of French. Two men are yelling. 

A third voice joins them. “Fuck! Stop, goddammit!” A gravelly voice. A familiar voice.

_I didn’t need you being concerned with my personal safety in Albert’s. And I can handle myself here just fine, thanks._

There’s the sound of glass breaking, and a shout of pain. Dean looks down the street. He can’t see anything from here. The voices are carrying some distance through the night air. He rolls his eyes, apologises silently to Victor, and goes out through the gate.

He keeps to the shadows along the wall that borders the street, and walks towards the noises that are still intermittently being blown his way by the steady breeze that’s making the fronds of the date palms move restlessly. The road makes a sharp curve a hundred metres or so further on, and Dean looks before turning the corner. There are two men standing over a third who’s lying half propped up against the whitewashed wall. In the dim light Dean can still make out that the standing men are young, early twenties at most. One is in what looks like army fatigues, the other in dark pants and a white polo shirt. The figure on the ground has dark hair, and his head lolls back against the wall, unmoving.

The man in fatigues, still yelling, draws his foot back and kicks the unmoving man in his side.

That does it. Dean takes the corner at a run and tackles him. He follows him down and straddles him, swinging at his head. The man, kid really, brings his hands up to protect his face, and doesn’t fight back. The man in the polo shirt pulls at Dean, trying to get him off his friend. He manages to land a couple of punches to Dean’s head, but backs off when Dean stands up. Polo Shirt grabs the other man by the arm and pulls him to his feet. He yells one last sentence in mixed Arabic and French at the prone figure on the ground and they both run off down the street.

Dean moves to the man lying on the ground, semiconscious and bleeding. It’s hard to see in the darkness of the street, but Dean’s hunch is correct. It’s Trench Coat.

“Hey,” he says, squatting down beside the man. “You okay, buddy?” The man groans and rolls onto his side, cradling the spot where he’d been kicked. “Do you think you can walk?”

He peers up at Dean. “Oh for fuck’s sake. You again.” Trench Coat struggles into a sitting position and looks at Dean before leaning over and spitting out blood, “Of course I can walk.” He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to make good on that pronouncement.

Dean asks, “What was that all about? I heard the yelling from the inn. I could only understand a few words, something about girls? You poaching someone’s girlfriend?”

“Hardly,” the man says dryly. “It was just a misunderstanding.” He extends a hand, and Dean pulls him to his feet. He’s weaving a bit, and Dean grabs his arm and steadies him. “Thanks.”

“From what I’ve seen, you seem to have a lot of misunderstandings,” Dean says to the man still hanging onto his arm.

“Yeah, well, what can I say, it's kind of a gift.” The tone is snarky and Dean smiles in spite of himself. Trench Coat is charming in his own way. 

“What’s your name, anyway? I can’t keep calling you Trench Coat.”

“Why the hell would you call me that in the first place?”

Dean looks uncomfortable. “The first time I saw you, in Abéché, you were wearing a trench coat when you went into Albert’s.”

The man grins, and then grimaces because of the cut on his lip. It’s an attractive smile and makes his face look much less forbidding. Dean’s reminded uncomfortably of his attraction to the man the first time he saw him. “Yeah. I know it’s not exactly good for the weather here, but it’s kind of a good luck charm. My name’s Cas.” He leans against the whitewashed wall for support and kicks aside the remains of a broken bottle.

“Cas?”

“Short for Castiel. Castiel Novak. Doctor Castiel Novak. I work out of the MSF camp in Fada. It’s southeast of here.”

“I’m Dean. Dean Winchester. What’s MSF?”

“ _Médecins sans Frontières_. Doctors Without Borders.” Now that he mentions this, Dean can see he’s in green scrub pants and a once-white, now bloodstained, white tee with a red logo on it.

“What are you doing in Faya-Largeau?” Dean asks.

“Measles vaccinations.” Cas closes his eyes for a second, and then blinks a few times to clear his vision. “We send teams out to do mobile clinics in the villages, we work with local medical staff where there are any, and we do it ourselves when there aren’t.” He stops for a moment, distracted.

“Measles doesn’t sound very life-threatening,” Dean says. Now that the man looks a little steadier on his feet, Dean relaxes. He’s probably not going to have to carry him anywhere.

“It is. It kills a lot of kids.” Cas puts his hand up to the back of his head and hisses in pain. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got a concussion. I can’t drive back to Fada tonight. I need someplace to stay until I’m sure I’m okay and the symptoms go away. I’d tell you to fuck off but I kind of need your help this time.”

“Your gratitude is overwhelming.” Dean’s tone is as dry as the 350 miles of desert between Abéché and Faya-Largeau. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

Cas smiles at Dean crookedly, “So, you saved me, you’re responsible for me now.” The smile does something to Dean, cut lip and all. He fights against the ember of attraction that’s flaring up.

“Please. You’re a little banged up is all. It’s not like I saved your life or anything.”

“True. So you’re only responsible for me for…” Cas checks his watch. “Eight hours, which means you’re off the clock at 8:30.”

Dean’s about to argue, but he takes a look at Cas, pale and pinched-looking now in the dim light provided by the moon, and sighs. Why not? He’ll rack up some karma points and maybe see if the attraction he feels to this asshole is still there in the morning. He guides him back to the auberge. 

Inside his room, he sits Cas on his bed and hands him a couple of Tylenol and a bottle of water. Dean pours some water from the pitcher on the dresser into the porcelain basin, and wets a cloth. He helps Cas wipe the blood off his face and out of his hair. There’s a bruise forming on his ribs and a pretty impressive bump on the back of his head.

“So, what am I looking for to see if you’ve got a concussion?”

“Are my pupils the same size?” Dean looks into his eyes. They’re that amazing blue that he remembers. His pupils are large in the dim light.

“Yes.”

“Keep looking.” Cas turns on the bedside lamp. “Did they both contract?”

“Yes,” Dean answers.

“Okay, that’s good.”

“What else?”

“Umm, memory problems, but I can remember the whole night, so okay there. Confusion? Not yet anyway. Dizziness? Check. Blurred vision? Check. Headache? Double check. I’m not nauseated, so there’s that. And I don’t know about balance problems because I’m sitting on your bed.”

“So, what’s my job?”

“Just sit with me, make sure I keep breathing, watch for seizures.” He grabs the single pillow on Dean’s bed, twists to put it against the headboard, and leans back, stretching gingerly. His tee shirt rides up, exposing a strip of skin above the waistband of his scrubs. It’s very distracting. Dean finds his attention drawn to it and casts around for a subject for conversation to keep his imagination in check.

“I thought you were an oil worker when I saw you in Albert’s in Abéché. And I thought you were Canadian. You were swearing up a storm in Québecois and you were with a couple of French-Canadian roughnecks. What were you fighting about?” 

Cas chooses to ignore the last question. He smiles. “Yeah, the _joual_ came back pretty quick, talking with those guys.” At Dean’s nonplussed look, he adds, “I went to med school at McGill University in Montreal. Lived off-campus, French roommates, learned the slang.” 

“You sounded very convincing.” Dean hands Cas the bottle of water again, and Cas drinks some.

“But you recognized it. That surprises me. You look like the all-American boy next door.”

“Oh. I am. Kansas born and bred. But I was working up in the Alberta oil patch a couple years back, I’m a petroleum engineer. I knew a guy there who was from Quebec City.”

“You knew a guy.” Cas raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah. I knew a guy.” Dean smiles at the memory. Vincent had been fun. Fun and passionate. Vincent Picard. Dean had not been able to resist calling him Jean-Luc. Especially in bed.

“You knew him well enough to learn French from him.” Cas makes it a statement. 

Dean wonders why he’s telling Cas all this, it’s intimate, sitting on the bed together in a yellow circle of lamplight, conducive to sharing confidences. They’re at right angles to each other, Dean leaning against the wall, Cas against the headboard. He decides to answer the non-question.

“Yeah, we lived together.”

“Roommates?” 

Dean looks deliberately at him. “No.”

Cas smiles. “Ah. Good to know.” It’s Dean’s turn to raise an eyebrow, but Cas’s eyes have drifted shut. Has he just been flirted with? He’s not sure. 

Dean shares the bed with Cas, who sticks to his own side of the bed and is restless, but doesn’t show any other symptoms. Dean has to admit that the way they’re sharing the bed is nothing like the stray daydreams he may or may not have had about the mysterious blue-eyed man he’d had in the week or so since he saw him in Abéché. Those had been decidedly less G-rated. He smiles at himself. How did he get into a situation like this? Sharing a bed with the guy that he’s nursing some kind of misguided crush on. At 8:30 he wakes Cas, who groans as he opens his eyes. 

“Mornin’, Sunshine,” Dean says cheerfully. Cas glowers at him. “It’s 8:30 and I’m off the clock. How are you feeling?” 

“Like someone jackhammered my head. How are you so cheerful this early?”

“Clean living and not making a habit out of pissing off the locals.”

“Hey I —” Cas stops. “Fair point.” He sits up and opens the half-finished bottle of water from the night before. “How long are you here in Faya-Largeau?” he asks Dean, and takes a long drink.

“Not sure. I’m heading up north as soon as we get the all-clear on the insurgent activity.” Dean stands up and stretches the kinks out of his arms.

“Where up north?” Cas asks.

“Past Ounianga Kébir. Up on the plateau, east of the mountains. There’s an oilfield up there I’m going to be working at.”

“It’s dangerous up there.” Cas swings his legs over the side of the bed, and slowly gets to his feet.

“The field has security. And I have babysitters to get me up there.” Dean waits for Cas to follow him out of the room.

“It’s not a joke, Dean.” Cas’s voice is serious. “Boko Haram are a real threat to foreigners in Chad. The insurgents mostly stay up north. It’s wild country up there in the Tibesti Mountains and over the border in Libya. It’s their territory and oil workers are favourite targets. You need to be careful.” 

“What about you?” Dean pulls the door shut behind them and they walk down the corridor to the lobby of the auberge.

“So far they’ve left the MSF alone, but I was up in Aozi a few days ago, people are scared.”

“That all seems so unreal. I’ve been in Chad for months, but this is my first trip up to the Sahara. I want to see more of it, but I’m stuck here.”

“If you aren’t going north right away, come check out the camp in Fada and I’ll show you the sights.”

“The sights?”

“Yep,” he grins and pulls a pair of aviator shades out of his pocket and puts them on. It’s unfair how attractive they make him look. “It’s the least I can do to say thanks for last night. I know some pretty amazing places. I’m going to be at the clinic for awhile this morning, seeing as I didn’t make it back to Fada last night, I have some paperwork I might as well get done before I head back. If you find out before noon that you’re not going out to the oilfield, and you want to see some of the desert, come find me at the clinic. It’s on the main square, just past Chez Elyse.” 

Dean’s almost got whiplash from the turnaround in Cas’s attitude. He's still standing there watching Cas walk out the front door of the inn as Youssef appears in the lobby.

“Why was he here?” he asks sharply. Dean is taken aback. It’s none of Youssef’s business anyway.

“We were just talking.”

Youssef moves towards the door and spits into the courtyard. “He’s not a desirable person to be seen with,” he says in French-accented English.

 _Not desirable. Hmm_. Dean’s going to have to disagree with that. 

“That man knows more about Boko Haram than he should,” Youssef says.

“He’s a doctor. He doesn’t have anything to do with them,” Dean says, defensive for some reason he can’t put a name to. 

Youssef pulls a cigarette pack out of his pocket and lights up, Félix joins them as Youssef continues. “People are wary of the vaccination clinic. It’s foreign: needles and western medicine. The clinic was in Koro Toro a month ago, and a girl disappeared. Then the clinic goes to Gouro. A day later two girls go missing.” He drags hard on the cigarette. “People talk, they notice the coincidences.” Félix nods in agreement, and takes the cigarette Youssef offers him.

The short uncomfortable silence that follows is broken when Victor comes in from the courtyard. “We’re not going up to the Kébir lease block today. I was just at the prefecture police station. They’ve received reports that there were attacks at Aozi and Gouro yesterday. Another kidnapping at Aozi. We’re staying here until we get more details. Well, _you’re_ staying here,” he looks at Dean. “We’ve got to go get a couple geologists over by Iriba and take them to N’Djamena to ship out back to France. Things should be quiet enough when we get back to get you up north. Meanwhile you can relax for a few days.”

Dean consults his mental map of Chad. “Take me to Fada on your way to Iriba. I can wait there for you to get back as easy as I can wait here.”

Victor looks suspicious. “What’s in Fada?’

“I have a friend in Fada.” Dean wonders if that’s true, but spending time getting to know Cas better sounds like a more interesting proposition than staying in Faya-Largeau alone. “I’ve been invited to stay for a few days, so it works out well.” Victor looks like he wants to argue, but really what can he do? Dean’s the client.

They head back to Chez Elyse for breakfast, and while the other three linger over their tea, Dean excuses himself and goes looking for the medical clinic and Cas. He finds the former, a whitewashed building on the square, and the universal antiseptic smell assails his nostrils as he walks through the door. In careful French, he asks the Chadian doctor he meets inside if he can speak to Dr. Novak. 

“Je suis désolée. Il est parti.” she answers. _I’m sorry. He had to leave._

 _Oh_. Dean is disappointed at this. He starts to thank the woman, but she interrupts to ask if he’s _Monsieur Winchester_. He nods and she hands him a folded piece of paper with his name written on it. He unfolds it.

_Dean,_

_I had to leave earlier than expected to get back to Fada. The invitation’s still open if you want. The camp’s not hard to find. Just ask for me._

_C._

The tone of the note is about what he expected from Cas: short, to the point, and devoid of niceties. Dean smiles his thanks at the woman and tucks the note into his pocket. He retraces his path and joins Victor, Félix, and Youssef at the restaurant. After breakfast they head back to the inn. Dean leaves most of his belongings in his room — which is booked for a week — and packs an overnight bag with a few changes of clothing. He grabs that and his backpack and soon they’re heading southeast across the desert. The trip takes about five hours and it’s late afternoon when they arrive in Fada, passing a burned out tank just outside the town.

Fada looks a lot like Faya-Largeau. It’s smaller, but also walled in mud brick, the walls on either side of the entry gate painted in the red, yellow and blue of the Chadian flag. Twisting streets mean that they have to drive slowly, dodging camels and pedestrians. They stop at the police station to check in and find out that the MSF camp is just outside the walls on the eastern side of town. Victor drops Dean off at the collection of tent-like buildings pitched in an flat open area and says he’ll be back in a few days. Dean stands there, his bags at his feet and feels a strange sense of adventure and elation as he watches the two cars drive slowly away. He shoulders his bag and backpack and walks towards the nearest tent.


	4. Chapter 4

The camp reminds him of reruns of M*A*S*H he’s seen on cable. Dean pushes open the door to the first tent building he comes to. It’s furnished as an office. “Hello?” he calls.

“Just a minute,” someone answers from behind a barrier of filing cabinets. A moment later a short blond man comes into view balancing an open laptop on a small pile of binders. “Can I help you?” 

“Uh, I’m looking for Castiel Novak?” He makes it a question.

“Hot damn, Cassie’s got himself a boyfriend.” The man puts his load down on a convenient desk and gives Dean a not-very-subtle once over. “He said that he might be having a visitor, and let me tell you, you don’t disappoint.”

Dean is flustered. There’s no way he’s Cas’s boyfriend, though a treasonous part of him starts thinking about what that might be like. _Down, boy_. The man takes in Dean’s look of confusion and extends a hand, grinning broadly. “I’m Gabriel Novak. One of the doctors here. And you are?”

Several things hit Dean at once as he shakes the man’s hand. _Novak._ This short blond guy who’s now busy peeling the wrapper from a candy bar and regarding him with open amusement must be a relative of Cas’s. _And_ Cas has talked about him. Already.

“Dean. Dean Winchester. Petroleum engineer with McMillan-Van der Linden.”

“And how do you know my baby bro?”

 _Huh, well that explains the same name_. “Uh, we’ve bumped into each other a couple of times over the last week or so.” _We spent last night in bed together._ He hopes that last part wasn’t out loud.

“Jesus, Gabe, stop with the interrogation.” Cas walks into the tent and smiles at Dean. Like the day before, he’s wearing an MSF tee shirt and scrubs. “I see you’ve met my brother. Sorry about that.”

Dean’s glad for the rescue. “Both of you are doctors?”

“Yep,” Gabe answers through a mouthful of chocolate. “Mother is _so_ proud. Of us, anyway. She’s still coping with the disappointment that is our other brother, Michael.” He leans forward and whispers conspiratorially, “He’s a vet.” 

Cas rolls his eyes. “As riveting as this all is, I’m sure Dean wants to drop off his bags and get a drink. See you later at the Bucket?”

“Yeah, I have to enter some vaccine lot numbers. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Cas leads Dean down a path between tents, pointing out the clinic tents and kitchen facilities. They reach one at the end of a row distinguished by a sign over the door that says _Guest Quarters_. “Sometimes we get new doctors rotating into camp to learn the ropes. No one’s here right now, so it’s yours for a few days.” Cas opens the door and and Dean follows him inside. The furnishings are pretty basic; a twin-size bed with a thin mattress, a pillow and rolled up sleeping bag on top, a desk and chair, a desk lamp, a low chest of drawers. Dean puts his bags down on the bed.

“OK, let’s go. There are better places to hang out than in here," Cas says, and steers Dean back outside.

They walk through twisting streets in a strangely comfortable silence, passing women in long robes with babies strapped to their chests, and army troops in sand-coloured camo. The market is smaller than the ones in Faya-Largeau and Abéché, fewer stalls with fewer goods for sale, a couple of skinny chickens scratching around on the ground. They turn a corner and Cas leads him to a gate in the mud brick wall. Right beside the open gate is an abandoned bucket from an excavator, the size of a large wash tub, once painted yellow, but now mostly scoured by sand to a dull rust colour. There is no sign of the rest of the machine.

“How did that even get here?” Dean asks.

“It’s a mystery,” Cas answers, “It’d make more sense if it were part of a tank.”

They pass through the gate into the courtyard. It reminds Dean of Chez Elyse except it’s outdoors: resin tables and chairs are set out on the sandy ground, a roof of tarps suspended from poles keeping the tables shaded. The bar looks makeshift, a sheet of plywood resting on oil drums. Two tables are occupied by soldiers in fatigues, and another by a group of men, some in western clothing and the others in robes. Cas grabs one of the bigger tables, and soon a large bottle of beer and two glasses are sitting in front of them.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Dean grins. “I wasn’t sure either. But Kébir is out of bounds for a few days, so I decided to take you up on your offer. You’re my Plan B.”

“I’m off tomorrow, do you want to see some of the desert? There’s a place a couple of hours away that’s definitely worth a visit.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?” Dean asks, sipping the barely cool beer..

“Oh, no. Not going to spoil the surprise,” Cas answers, leaning back and stretching his legs out in front of him.

“Really? What’s with the surprise stuff? It’s not like it’s a first date.” It’s out before Dean realizes how that sounds, which is not how he meant it. It really isn’t. Freudian slips be damned. He pretends not to notice Cas’s slightly raised eyebrows and barely hidden smile.

Before it can get any more awkward, people are dropping into the other seats at the table. The blond man, Gabe; a dark-haired woman in her early thirties; and a man about a decade older.

“Paperwork didn’t take as long as expected. And now it’s Miller time,” Gabe says.

Cas makes the introductions. “Dean, you’ve already met my brother. This is Meg Masters, also a doctor from the States, and Dr. Peter Kiyonga, from Kenya. This is Dean Winchester, from Kansas.”

Dean wonders for a moment how Cas knows that before remembering their conversations of the night before. He responds politely to their greetings and Gabe gets up to get more beer.

The evening passes in a pleasant blur. Meg is acerbic and funny, trading barbs with Cas, much to Gabe and Dean’s amusement. Peter is thoughtful and more reserved. Conversation flows easily and they talk politics and tell stories of their time spent on previous MSF programmes. Dean and Meg discover that Die Hard is their favorite movie, and start quoting it to each other until Gabe gets fed up enough to start threatening violence. 

Dean is very aware of Cas sitting next to him and the heat coming from Cas’s body. It’s a good feeling, comforting and ever-so-slightly erotic. The sky darkens, and strings of bare bulbs woven through the ropes holding the tarps up come on, giving the bar a party atmosphere. Meg is telling a story involving snakes and laundry from her time in the Natal province of South Africa when Cas gets up to go to the bar for yet another round. 

Dean is feeling the beer. They’ve eaten some bread and cheese while they’ve been drinking, but not enough to stop the buzz that Dean’s got going. Peter and Meg are arguing good-naturedly about which village they were in when a goat ate Peter’s paperback copy of _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_. He feels loose enough to turn and watch Cas standing at the bar, and admire the view. The tee shirt and scrubs hug Cas’s body, outlining his muscular build. Dean’s about to stop staring, good manners making a belated appearance, when a small figure crosses the sandy ground and makes straight for Cas. It’s a young girl, in her mid-teens, her head covered. She leans close to Cas, her body language tense, and speaks urgently to him. Cas looks worried and says something back. She shakes her head. He says a few more words and she shakes her head again. He looks away to say something to the bartender. The girl looks over at the table, her eyes catching Dean’s for a long moment. 

Gabe notices Dean’s preoccupation with watching Cas and asks him how long he’s planning on staying in Fada, each word just dripping with innuendo. Dean pretends not to notice the tone and tells him it’s just for a few days, and by the time he looks over at Cas again, he’s alone. _What was that about? Why was he talking so seriously with that girl?_ A memory shifts and surfaces: Cas’s attackers in Faya-Largeau yelling something about girls. He hears Youssef in his head: _The clinic was in Koro Toro a month ago, and a girl disappeared_. It makes Dean uncomfortable. 

“Clarence! It’s about time! We were in danger of dying from thirst,” Meg says, reaching for the bottles as Cas returns from the bar. 

“Who was that you were talking to?” Dean asks, aiming for casual. 

“The bartender.” Cas gestures at the bottles he’s put down on the table as if it should be obvious. His face is carefully blank. _Oh ok. It’s going to be like that._ Dean drops the subject, too buzzed from the beer to think the implications through anyway. 

They drink for an hour or so more before returning to the camp. The walk back is a hilarious affair, Meg and Gabe singing, and all of them weaving a little more than they’d probably like to admit. Dean walks beside Cas, their shoulders brushing occasionally. Gabe leers knowingly at how close they’re walking. The group leaves Dean at his tent and carries on loudly down the row of tents. Dean strips to his boxers, unrolls the sleeping bag on the bed, and is asleep in moments.


	5. Chapter 5

"And how are you feeling this morning? Headachy? Nauseous perhaps?" Cas says as he sticks his head through the door of Dean's tent. He withdraws in a hurry when a sneaker flies at his face.

"Fuck off." Dean turtles back into the sleeping bag. “The sun isn’t even up yet.”

He opens the door again. "Come on. You said you wanted to go see the surprise cool place. I'm your tour guide.” He pauses, “It’s not a date, I promise." He grins, and Dean surveys his faded black AC/DC tee and worn-looking cargo shorts through gummy eyelids. Cas's calves are nice. Firm-looking. _Pity it’s not a date_. Pushing his hand through his hair, Dean firmly puts those thoughts out of his head, along with his misgivings of the night before. It was just the beer talking. Cas is a doctor for fuck’s sake; he had lots of reasons to be talking to that young girl; he doesn’t owe Dean any explanations. And he’s Dean’s tour guide today, so Dean is going to forget about it and enjoy himself.

"Okay, gimme a minute," he says.

"I'll be outside. I'm pulling out in 15. Want to beat the worst of the heat."

Dean pulls on some clothes and retrieves his sneaker from the floor, discarding it in favour of hiking boots. He throws a water bottle and a jacket, and after a moment's thought, his satellite phone, into a backpack. Pushing out of the tent, he can see Cas loading things into a jeep that's seen better days. Jerrycans, presumably gas or water, are already strapped onto the chassis. Cas is hefting a cooler into the back seat. Even at this early hour, the camp is busy. Staff is moving in and out of the hospital tents, someone is singing Billy Idol enthusiastically but off-key, and a donkey is braying somewhere beyond the kitchen tent.

Dean puts his pack in the back and climbs into the jeep, a little self-conscious in his shorts and boots. He feels like he belongs on one of Alex’s kids’ shows, the one with the lemur. Cas looks at him over his aviators, smiling appreciatively. 

"What?" 

Cas just grins.

"I look like one of the Kratt brothers," Dean grumps.

"You look like the cute one," Cas says and leans into the car to hand Dean a dented metal travel cup. The scent of coffee that steams up at him is pure nirvana. He hides his blush by busying himself with drinking it while Cas swings himself into the driver’s seat.

Cas drives slowly out of Fada as the road is occupied by villagers walking solo or in pairs or leading donkeys. A few miles outside of town, Cas consults the compass on the dash of the jeep and cross checks it with a GPS unit that's suction-cupped to the windshield. They head southeast off the road onto a faint track. The sun is just peeking over the horizon, changing the colour of the sandy soil from grey to pale rose.

Dean finds himself smiling. The caffeine is hitting his bloodstream and he steals a look over at Cas who’s driving with one arm draped over the wheel. There’s an old cassette deck in the dash of the jeep. Dean opens the glove box and finds four or five tape cases rattling around. A couple are homemade, the labels sporting Arabic writing. Those he puts back. He looks at the other ones in the dim light of the dash. AC/DC’s _Back in Black_ , Paul Simon’s _Graceland_ , and Queen’s _Greatest Hits. Of course_. He smiles at the last one and pushes into the deck. _Fat Bottomed Girls_ starts up and he settles back with his coffee, smirking to himself, feet up on the dash. Cas looks over and smiles at him. 

_Oh, won't you take me home tonight?_  
_Oh, down beside your red firelight_  
_Oh you gonna let it all hang out_  
_Fat bottomed girls you make the rocking world go round_

They drive for a few hours, crossing the erg and weaving around the dunes. Eventually, the jeep bumps onto stony ground that’s tangerine in the early morning light. They pass twisted, wind-scoured red sandstone formations that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those old coyote and roadrunner cartoons. Up ahead, a dark line on the horizon is becoming more distinct, and the sun streams over the jeep, casting a strange elongated shadow that races across the desert beside them. 

Dunes of sand are visible here and there, now tinted yellow as the sun rises higher. Strange fingers of stone and mushroom-shaped outcrops jut upwards out of the sand. The wind has abraded the sandstone for thousands of years, sculpting the rock into pillars and pinnacles of fantastic shape, some towering two hundred or more feet in the air, and others toppled and lying like cut trees across the landscape. They’re up on the Ennedi Plateau now, and the outcroppings are more frequent. Large towers and arches go by and are left behind in the dust kicked up by the jeep. 

Despite the coffee, Dean’s feeling the beginning of a headache. A souvenir of the night before at the Bucket, no doubt. He fumbles in his backpack and pulls out some Tylenol, which he washes down with bottled water and puts both back in the pack. “I’m pretty sure my headache is Gabe’s fault,” he grouses, remembering Gabe buying more than one round of beer the night before. “He’s incorrigible. I hope your other brother is a better person.”

Cas smiles. “Yeah, Michael is much less of a jerk than either me or Gabe, but Anna’s the best of us all.”

“You have a sister too? Big family.”

Cas looks over. “Anna’s the baby. She writes and illustrates children’s books. And she would definitely _not_ try to get you wasted on purpose. You have brothers or sisters?”

Dean leans against the side window of the car and answers. “I have a kid brother, Sam. He’s a lawyer in Lawrence. A sister-in-law Eileen; she’s a teacher at the Kansas School for the Deaf. And a niece Alex, she’s four, and apparently runs the daycare preschooler room like she’s a mafia don.” Cas laughs at the descriptions.

A short time later, Cas stops the jeep in the lee of a rock wall. “We walk from here.” he says. They get out of the jeep and Cas grabs a canteen and foil-wrapped packages out of the cooler and puts it all in his backpack. “Come on, we’re burning daylight.”

Dean grins and falls into step beside him. Cas leads him up what looks like a dry riverbed and into a canyon in the rock, its entrance a wide black fissure. The sandstone walls rise up several storeys high, blocking the sun and casting them into shadow. It’s quiet too, the wind that was present out in the open gone now. The canyon twists and turns and they walk for quite a while. Dean glances over at Cas, wondering how long it’s going to take to get to wherever the fuck they’re going. Cas must be able to read his expression because he smiles and says, “Don’t worry, it’ll be worth it. I promise.”

Dean can hear noises now. Not the wind, but an otherworldly bleating and bellowing that echoes off the walls of the narrow canyon.

The canyon makes one more turn and then opens up into a huge cavern-like area. Dean stops dead. In front of him, ribbed and scoured sandstone walls stretch up for hundreds of feet all around them, glowing ochre and amber in the late morning light. Interconnected pools of black water cover the sandy floor, and everywhere he looks there are camels. Hundreds of them, standing in the pools, drinking, Standing beside the pools. Lying in the shade of the canyon walls. A small group of men in the robes and veiled turbans like he’d seen in Faya-Largeau, Bedouins maybe, lounge against the sun-warmed rock. 

“The _Guelta d’Archei_ ,” says Cas. “It’s a type of oasis. The water table hits the surface here.” Dean is speechless, taking it all in. “It’s kind of like a highway rest stop. The salt caravans rest their camels here and let them drink. They’ve done it for millennia.” The camels are loud, milling around restlessly. A few young ones peer at them curiously from underneath their standing parents.

“This is…incredible,” Dean says. 

Cas smiles at the wonder in his voice. “Yeah, it is.”

“Why’s the water black?” 

“Thousands of years of camel dung,” Cas answers.

“Okay. Not swimming then.” Dean makes a face.

“Well you wouldn’t want to anyway,” Cas continues.

“Why not?”

“Crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles?” Dean looks incredulously at Cas. “In the desert. You’re shitting me.”

“Nope, I’m not. There are Nile crocodiles in the waters here, remnants from the time when the entire Sahara was a wetland. Over the years each generation has gotten smaller so they can survive in these pools.”

They walk through the milling camels over to one of the pools, and sure enough the eyes and snout of a crocodile are visible in the black water. It flips its tail lazily and disappears underwater. Cas walks over to the canyon wall and sits at the base, leaning back against the newly sun-warmed rock. Dean follows suit, and they sit in silence, watching the camels.

After a while, Dean speaks. “Cas, I’m glad you kept it a surprise. I’ve never visited any place like this. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d described it to me.”

“Yeah, I was blown away the first time I came here too. It’s pretty special.”

After a while, Cas rummages in the backpack and brings out a tiny Coleman burner, which he lights. He puts a pot on the burner and fills it from the canteen. When the water boils he makes tea and hands a tin cup of it to Dean along with a sandwich of some kind of meat rolled in flatbread. Dean looks around at the many animals standing in the pools and hopes it’s not camel. _Really, really_ hopes. It’s good, whatever it is, and they wolf them down, hungry from the walk into the canyon.

In a bit, Cas gets up. “Come on, we’re not done yet.” He leans over and pulls Dean to his feet. The sensation of Cas’s hand gripping his wrist makes him blush. When did his body decide to turn traitor like this? _This isn’t really a date_ , he reminds himself. They clean up their meal and Dean follows Cas as he heads to a trail leading up one of the walls of the canyon. 

Dean follows, moving carefully over the smooth rock. They climb for about twenty minutes until the path levels out into a natural balcony. Three hunters, carrying spears, stand there, alertness in every line and angle of their bodies. Two armed riders on horseback chase down two riderless horses to the right, and a camel stands, watching. Dean blinks in surprise. The hunters are nothing but paint on the wall of the cliff, and so are the horsemen and their mounts, and the watchful camel. The colours seem as fresh as though they’d been painted the week before. 

“How old is this?’” 

Cas shrugs. “The horsemen? Three thousand years, could be four.’ He moves along the wall, ”The camel looks older. It’s hard to tell.” 

“Cas, this is amazing. Thank you.” Cas smiles at the sincerity in Dean’s voice.

“Not bad for a first date.” Dean can’t tell if Cas is joking. He’s smiling but his eyes are unreadable behind his aviators.

“I thought you said it wasn’t a date.” Dean says lightly.

“Do you want it to be?” Cas counters.

Dean’s saved from answering by the appearance of two men in climbing gear on the balcony. Europeans: German or Scandinavian by the look of them. They greet Dean and Cas in stilted English and then exclaim over the rock paintings, and the moment is gone. Cas leads the way back down the trail to the black pools. A new caravan has arrived, and the camels, some of them decked out in ornate saddles, are drinking thirstily from the pools, their drivers making tea over small fires near the canyon walls.Dean takes one last look around, trying to commit it all to memory, and then follows Cas back out the passage for the half hour walk back to the jeep.

“Are we heading back now?” Dean’s voice doesn’t betray how sad he is at the thought of heading back to Fada now. He’s enjoying Cas’s company.

“Nope. I have one more surprise to show you.” Cas starts the car and swings wide of the canyon. They bump over the uneven rocky terrain as they head southeast, the sun beating down on the roof of the jeep. Cas consults the GPS and the compass and they swing further to the south, skirting more of the wind-scoured rock formations.

“Is it far?” Dean asks.

“About twelve kilometres, give or take.”

Half an hour later, they pull up to a rock formation straight out of a fairy tale. A swath of badlands crossed with a Greek legend. The vast field of sandstone formations are golden brown in the afternoon light. Seamed and ridged layers are visible — remnants of when the area was the bottom of a long-dead sea, Dean thinks. They are lumpy and rounded, and hundreds of passageways are visible between the separate rock columns. Sparse grasses grow in the spaces between the rocks. Dean wouldn’t be surprised to see a minotaur emerge from one of the openings. He wants very badly to explore.

“The _Labyrinthe d’Oyo_.” Cas says, as he turns the jeep off.

“Can we go in there?” he asks Cas.

“That’s the plan.”

They get out of the jeep and make their way into the maze. The sun is well past its zenith now, so the passageways are shadowed and cool. Dean wanders through the labyrinth, looking up at the azure sky visible between the lumpy, rounded columns. He’s lost in thought, but aware of Cas somewhere behind him. He can hear him whistling. _Scar Tissue. Red Hot Chili Peppers_. Dean grins. It’s a favorite of his. He turns to say something to Cas, but suddenly Cas isn’t there.

“Cas?” Dean calls. Nothing but the soft sighing of the incessant desert wind through the maze. “CAS!” Dean calls, louder. He turns and starts to retrace his steps. He’s further into the labyrinth than he thought. Scanning the ground for footprints in the thin layer of sand over stony ground, he’s starting to feel uneasy. He picks up speed, recognizing the shape of one of the columns he passed on the way in, like a hunched old woman pulling a hood close over her head, and makes towards it. His heart is starting to hammer in a very unpleasant fashion. _Where’s Cas? What happened to him? Can he find his way back to the Guelta if he has to on foot?_ Dean turns around a corner and Cas is there, leaning against the rock like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Dean is suddenly furious.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asks, pissed beyond belief.

“What are you talking about?” Cas asks, surprised.

“Were you hiding on purpose?” Dean’s still pumped on adrenaline, still imagining what it would be like to be abandoned in the middle of the desert. “It’s not funny. I thought you’d left.”

“I needed to get rid of some of the tea. I wanted some privacy for a minute. You didn’t really think I’d leave you here?”

Dean’s a bit ashamed of himself, now that Cas is in front of him but there's still a bit of fear clinging to him, fear of being alone in this alien environment.

“I don’t know what I thought.” He turns away, anger still there, but waning.

“Dean,” His voice conciliatory, Cas reaches out and grasps Dean’s shoulder and pulls him around. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Dean’s caught off balance and stumbles a bit, ending up closer to Cas than he intended. Cas looks at him intently. His eyes are so blue, Dean’s transfixed, staring at them from far too close. Desire is simmering just under the surface of his skin. He makes the mistake of dropping his gaze to Cas’s lips. That’s all it takes. Cas moves closer, backing Dean up against the sandstone column. He closes the final few inches and kisses Dean.

The touch of Cas’s lips galvanizes Dean. He wraps his arms around Cas, pulling him close, revelling in the feel of Cas’s chest pressed up against his. Cas pulls away and when Dean’s eyes open, Cas moves forward again, kissing him harder. Dean’s head is spinning. Cas’s kisses feel so good. They’re pressed together now from knees to lips, and Dean is so under the spell of the kisses that he barely feels the rough stone against his back.

Cas stops suddenly and pulls away, listening intently. Dean reaches for him again and tries to pull him back into a kiss.

“We’re not the only ones here.” Cas says, stepping back.

Dean’s still dizzy from the kisses. “So what if those German tourists see us necking, it’s not the end of the world.” 

Cas shushes him and says in a tense whisper, “Whoever they are, they’re not moving like tourists. Come on.” He pulls Dean away from the column and leads him, unresisting, further into the labyrinth.

“What’s going on?”

“Not now. Be as quiet as you can.”

Dean wants to ask more questions, but easygoing, charming Cas is gone. The stranger in front of him looks tough and fiercely competent. A far cry from the laid-back tour guide who’s kept Dean company all day. It's enough to make Dean decide to simply follow him, no questions asked.

They move through the maze of rock columns — randomly — Dean thinks at first, but soon he realizes Cas is moving steadily to their left. Dean had looked at the compass in the jeep before getting out, and the labyrinth was pretty well due north of the car. So they’re threading their way through the rocks towards the northwest. After ten minutes or so, Cas stops and unzips his backpack. He pulls out a handgun, checks the safety, and puts it in a pocket of his cargo shorts. _Oh. Shit’s getting real_. Dean really wants to know why a doctor is carrying a gun, but he remembers Cas’s instruction to be quiet. _What the hell is going on?_

Dean can hear noises now and again over the sounds of their feet on the stony ground. Low voices, their exact direction obscured by the forest of stone, but definitely coming from behind them. And once, he hears the distant sound of car engines and the clink of metal on stone, like a rifle barrel hitting one of the columns. Dean’s imagination is working overtime.

The adrenaline is pumping now. Cas pulls Dean through one more passageway and suddenly they’re in a more open part of the maze. The light is getting hazy, taking on a dark gold hue as the sun drops towards a line of jagged hills to the west of the labyrinth. Dean wonders what will happen if they’re still in the maze come nightfall. He doesn’t have much time to worry about it because a man appears behind them at another of the passageways that opens up onto the sandy area Dean and Cas are crossing. He’s in fatigue pants and a dark sweater. He stops and shouts something over his shoulder in Arabic.

Cas curses and drags Dean faster across the open expanse. There’s the sound of a gunshot, and something flies past Dean’s head like an angry wasp. He’s incredulous. _Someone’s shooting at us._

“Get down!” Cas’s voice is a commanding whisper. Bent over, they reach the other side of the open space and gain the safety of the rock columns again. Two more gunshots sound, and Dean can feel the small shards of rock rain down on him when a bullet hits the column above his head. Dean stops, stunned by disbelief, and Cas drags him around another stone pillar and pushes him into a sitting position. Cas stands and pulls the gun from his pocket. He peers around the column, back in the direction the bullets came from.

“Cas, what’s going on?” Dean asks, finally. 

“Boko Haram.”


	6. Chapter 6

“What do they want?” Dean’s really surprised that his voice is not betraying exactly how scared he is. 

“I don’t know. I’m surprised they’re shooting at us. It’s hard to hold dead people for ransom.” Cas ejects the magazine from the handgrip of the pistol and looks at it, before pushing it back in and pulling the slide back. “I’ve got seven or eight bullets left. I hope I won’t have to use them.” They fall silent, listening again. Sounds are tricky in the maze of stone pillars. “Listen, we need to get back to the jeep. We’ll keep heading west, but work our way southward. We should be able to stay out of their way long enough to get out of the labyrinth. Then we cut back eastward to the car.”

“How big is this place?” Dean asks.

“It covers four or five square kilometers. We’ve got plenty of room to avoid them if we’re lucky. Come on, let’s go.”

They weave their way through the columns, keeping the sun over their right shoulders and using the direction of the pillar shadows to navigate. They move as silently as possible, Cas motioning Dean to a stop occasionally to listen for pursuit. Mostly Dean just hears the wind, but once or twice he hears noises that could be pursuers. It’s hard to believe that less than an hour ago he was enjoying the hell out of kissing Cas, and now they’re literally running for their lives. He spares a thought for just how _I-told-you-so_ Victor is going to be when he finds out about this. If they survive.

They come to another break in the maze, an open sandy area, probably a third the size of a football field, most of it in shadow as the sun falls lower in the sky. Cas stops and looks across at the passages on the other side. “We’re going to run across and into the second passage on the left. The one with the acacia tree just to the right of it. Got it?”

Dean nods. Cas stands listening for a moment, and then says “Go!” They’re off and running when a voice yells from behind them. More gunshots ring out, the bullets travelling harmlessly past them. They make the opening of the passageway get a few feet in, and Dean is just about to collapse with relief when something punches him hard in the back of his left thigh, and he pitches forward, sprawling face-first in the sand. 

“Fuck,“ he exclaims, spitting out sand, “What the hell was that?” He tries to get his knees under him to get to his feet, but his left leg is not cooperating. It’s numb. _Oh this can’t be good._ Cas helps him turn on his right side and examines him.

“Dean, I need you to stay calm. You've been shot. We can't stay here, they're still coming after us. We’re going to have to move. As soon as we get deeper in the rocks, I’ll look at it, I promise.” He pulls Dean to his feet and half carries, half drags him deeper into the shelter of the columns. Dean’s not much help. He’s getting light-headed and his left leg is dragging and not carrying much weight. He’s still struggling to comprehend the fact that he’s been shot. He can feel something wet running down his leg, and distantly he wonders if he’s going to bleed to death. He’s concentrating hard on not making Cas support all his weight and that proves distracting enough. 

Cas stops when he finds an extra-broad column with a shallow depression at its base, and lowers Dean gently to the ground. The numbness is fading and Dean hisses as his thigh begins to burn.

“Sonovabitch that hurts!”

In the distance, there’s the faint sound of more gunshots. Cas stops for a second while rummaging through his backpack to listen, but it goes silent again and he pulls out a flashlight and a small pack. “I’ve only got the little first aid kit here, the big one’s back at the jeep. Let me see what I’m dealing with.”He turns the flashlight on and holds it in his teeth as he pulls a small pair of scissors out of the first-aid kid and cuts away the bottom part of the leg of Dean’s shorts.

“Eh, it’s not bad.” he grins reassuringly, putting the flashlight on the ground. “‘Tis but a scratch.”

 _Monty Python? Really?_ “God help me, if you tell me it’s just a flesh wound, I’ll…”

“Well, It _is_ just a flesh wound. Really. It’s gonna hurt like fuck, but you’re going to be ok. The bullet just grazed you.”

Dean leans over and sees a bloody furrow running along the outside of his thigh, a steady rivulet of blood dripping down out of it into the sand. He shouldn’t have looked. He feels clammy and sick to his stomach. 

“Cas, this is my first gunshot wound. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.” There’s an edge to his voice. He can feel the hysteria bubbling up. He’s cold now too, and shaky.

Cas unwraps a square gauze bandage and presses it gently against the wound. Dean gasps. Cas takes a tee shirt out of his backpack and rips it into strips, using them to tie the bandage to Dean’s leg. 

“Put pressure on this. It’ll slow down the bleeding,” Cas orders. He smooths Dean’s hair back from his forehead. “It’s ok. I don’t have a lot in this kit, but this should do until I can get the one from the jeep and then we can get you back to the clinic.” 

Dean presses his hand against the bandage on his thigh. “Are you forgetting there are fucking armed men who are fucking shooting at us in here?”

Cas gets up and Dean can see he’s got the gun in his hand again. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to go check out the ‘fucking armed men’ situation.” Dean’s not sure if he should be pissed off or reassured by Cas’s flippant reaction to being hunted by Islamist insurgents in an ancient natural labyrinth most of a day’s journey from anywhere that could remotely be called civilization. He decides that he’s too tired and scared to be pissed off. _Reassured it is._

Cas returns in probably less than ten minutes, but it seems like a lot longer to Dean. “They’re gone. I went south almost to the edge of the labyrinth. I didn’t see or hear anyone in the maze, but I did hear car engines in the distance. Going west. I don’t know why they’re gone, but it looks like they are.”

Dean hitches himself backwards to sit with his back against the wall of the depression. “We need help. No one knows we’re in trouble.” He straightens up suddenly. “Cas, there’s a sat phone in my backpack. I left it in the jeep, it’s shoved under my seat. We can call for help.”

Cas worries his lower lip between his teeth for a second. Despite the pain and lightheadedness, Dean is mesmerized watching it, remembering what those lips felt like pressed against his own. The sensation of Cas’s teeth nipping at his lip and... _Christ his leg hurts._

“You can’t walk that far at the moment. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to leave you and go back for the jeep, bring it around closer. And then help you out to it.” He takes the canteen out of his backpack and hands it to Dean. “It’s probably going to take me at least forty minutes to get back to the jeep and then back here. I’ll leave the flashlight with you. Wait half an hour and then turn it on so I can find my way back.” Cas leans over and squeezes Dean’s shoulder and then he’s gone, out of sight around the pillars.

Despite the pain in his leg, fatigue sneaks up on Dean and he slips between dozing and wakefulness. The sun’s below the horizon, and the sky still holds the lavender light of the sunset, but it’s dark down amongst the pillars of the labyrinth. It’s starting to get cold too, and his jacket’s in his backpack in the jeep. He hopes Cas gets back soon. 

His mind starts wandering, taking his attention away from his throbbing leg. Cas sure seems to be a magnet for trouble: the almost bar fight in Abéché, the actual fight in Faya-Largeau, the mysterious conversation with the Chadian girl at the Bucket that he denied, and now producing a gun and being hunted by Boko Haram, who showed up very coincidentally in a very remote place. Maybe he’s not the best person to get involved with, killer blue eyes or not. Something else is bothering him too. Something that Youssef or Félix had said to him. It wasn’t about Cas, but it made him think of something Cas had said, about the measles clinics and missing girls. He thinks hard, but it doesn’t come clear in his mind. Irritated with himself, Dean checks his watch and turns the flashlight on after half an hour, shining it in the direction Cas left in. 

He’s barely awake, flashlight drooping in his hand when he hears the sound of someone approaching. That wakes him up fast. Odds are that it’s Cas, but Dean has no idea what he’s going to do if it isn’t. He exhales in relief when Cas comes into the light.

“I got good news and bad news,” Cas says, “The good news is that I have the good first aid kit and some duct tape from the back of the jeep, and your backpack and sat phone. The bad news is that they shot the tires of the jeep and took the sat phone that was in the console and the gas and water cans. We have what’s left in my canteen and your water bottle to last us until help comes. Let me look at your leg again.” Cas opens the big first aid kit and puts on a pair of gloves. He unties the tee shirt bindings and takes off the gauze. The wound starts to bleed again sluggishly. Cas takes a syringe from the kit and fills it from a vial.

“What’s that?” Dean asks.

“Lidocaine. I’m going to numb your leg so that I can clean the wound out without hurting you more than you are already.”

“Pretty fancy first aid kit.”

“Yeah, we doctors get to make our own.” Cas grins and then carefully places the needle into the skin next to the wound and injects some of the fluid. He removes it and inserts it in the skin further along the wound until the whole area feels numb. He grabs a bottle of betadine and washes the wound out. Because he can’t feel anything, Dean’s able to watch this pretty clinically. Cas covers the wound with a pad of fresh gauze and then reaches into Dean’s backpack to bring out a roll of duct tape.

“Cas, I’m not a lawn chair that needs fixing.”

“Relax, duct tape is an excellent wilderness first-aid item.” He rips off a strip, careful to keep any sand off it, and smooths it over the gauze pad, and then places another one next to it. “It’s going to act like a pressure bandage. And here, take this.” He passes Dean a pill. “Vicodin. For pain.” Dean swallows it obediently.

Cas uses Dean’s sat phone to reach Gabe at the MSF camp. He promises to come for them at first light. When Dean starts to shiver again, Cas helps him into the jacket from his backpack, and then lies down on the sand next to Dean and pulls him close. 

“Looks like we’re spending another night together.” He covers them both with a foil emergency blanket from the first aid kit. Dean relaxes against him, Cas’s body heat welcome in the cooling night. The painkiller is kicking in and he’s feeling floaty.

“Worst first date ever.” Dean mumbles, and as he drifts off he thinks he feels lips brushing his forehead.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean wakes up the next morning when he feels his pillow move out from under his head. He opens a bleary eye and sees Cas stretching. His leg sets up a steady dull throb that isn’t improved by him struggling into a sitting position. He feels horrible, in addition to his leg, he’s stiff from sleeping on the ground.

Cas has his sat phone again, and when he notices that Dean is awake, he cuts off the conversation and comes back over. 

“Hey, how you feeling?”

Dean’s in no mood for stupid questions. “Like I got shot yesterday and slept on the ground all night.”

“Jeez, I’m sure I was a lot more pleasant the morning after the last time we slept together.” Cas stops grinning when he notices the pain evident on Dean’s face. He hands Dean another Vicodin from the big first aid kit along with the canteen to wash them down. “There are some granola bars and dates in my backpack if you’re hungry, but the cooler that had the rest of the food in it got stolen along with the gas and water.”

“I’m not hungry, thanks. When do you think they’ll get here to pick us up?”

“They left at sunrise. They’ll probably be here before noon. Gabe’s coming, and he’s bringing Benny and enough spare tires to fix up the jeep. So we just need to move out to the edge of the labyrinth so they can see us. I want to wait ‘til the Vicodin kicks in before you try to walk.”

“Who’s Benny?”

“Camp mechanic and IT guy.”

Dean remembers something from the night in Faya-Largeau. “You never did tell me the story of why you were wearing a suit and a freaking trench coat in Abéché. You said something about it being a good luck charm.”

Cas comes over and sits next to Dean and chews contemplatively on a date. “Huh, the first time we met: I’d just flown in from N’Djamena after a medical conference in Paris, so I was still wearing it.” He smiles, “It was my dad’s. He wore it all the time. I remember when I was little, he’d come home, and the first thing he’d do after he’d yell ‘I’m home’ was to hang it up in the closet. I went through a phase when I was about five when I hated him going to work. I was afraid that something was going to happen to him and he wouldn’t come home, and he told me that the coat was magic and would protect him. So it’s kind of a good luck thing, and I think of him when I wear it.” Cas stops, lost in thought. 

“You must miss him a lot,” Dean says, “When did he pass away?”

“What? He’s not dead. He and Mom still live near Boston.”

“I’m sorry.” Dean grimaces. “The way you told the story, I thought you’d inherited the coat.”

Cas laughs. “Nah, I rescued it when Dad was going to give it to Goodwill.” Cas looks over at Dean. “You think you can walk now?” Dean wonders about karma because he remembers asking Cas the same thing in the alleyway in Faya-Largeau.

“I think so. Help me up.” Cas pulls him carefully to his feet. He can stand on his own, and he can put weight on the leg, but he’s not going to be winning any awards for speed. Cas gathers up their belongings and they make their way slowly to the edge of the labyrinth to wait for rescue.

Gabe and Benny show up around noon. Dean and Cas are sitting in the shade of the first row of rock pillars when they see the car in the distance. Cas makes them retreat back into the maze until he can see that it’s Gabe for sure and not their pursuers from the night before. As the Land Rover gets closer, they can hear the sounds of Supertramp rolling across the desert. _Take the Long Way Home_ is pretty apt, Dean thinks. Gabe pulls up in front of them with a brown-haired, bearded man riding shotgun. He kills the engine and the sound of Supertramp comes to a halt.

“Cas. Dean. You know, if you wanted to shack up last night you could have just used the guest tent. You didn’t have to risk death and sand flies for a little nookie.” His voice is light, but even Dean can read the concern on his face. Cas rolls his eyes and helps Dean into the back seat of the Land Rover. 

The disabled jeep is almost two kilometres east of where they spent the night, and Dean is grateful to be able to sit in the car while Cas, Benny, and Gabe repair the jeep and talk in low, worried tones about the incident the night before. He stays in the Land Rover, stretched out across the back seat for the drive back to Fada. Cas follows in the jeep, and the convoy makes it back to Fada by nightfall. Despite Gabe wanting to contact the army post right away with the news of the Boko Haram attack, Cas talks him into waiting until the next day.

Cas redresses Dean’s wound in the hospital tent, and having the duct tape bandage pulled off his leg and the wound cleaned out with saline is not something Dean’s wanting to experience again any time soon. But some gauze packing, a new bandage, more antibiotics, another painkiller, and a decent dinner in the mess tent have him in a much better mood. Cas accompanies him down the rows of tents to the guest tent and follows him in.

“Do you need anything else, or do you just want to sleep?” Cas asks.

“I’d really like a shower. Can I do that with the dressing on there?”

Cas looks at him thoughtfully, and nods. “I just need to go get a few things.” He’s back in a couple of minutes with some plastic bags and tape.

“Dude, you are not going to tape me again.”

Cas smiles. “You have to keep the wound dry. I’m going to tape the bag over the bandage so you can shower. It’s just surgical tape, don’t be a baby.”

Dean pouts, but doesn’t disagree. After Cas is finished, he grabs a towel and his shaving kit from his duffle and walks stiffly to the door. Cas follows.

“I think I can shower by myself, thanks.” Dean isn’t sure why he’s being a jerk. He knows he’s doing it but he doesn’t seem to know how to stop.

“I just need to make sure you’re not going to fall over, then you’re all on your own. Scout’s honor.”

It takes Dean a couple of seconds to climb the two stairs up into the shower trailer. There are two shower stalls with curtains off a central room that has a bench for changing and cubbies for clothes. Cas trails behind Dean, joining him when Dean is inside hanging up his towel.

“I think I got this,” Dean says.

“I’m going to wait here for a minute in case you feel light-headed or dizzy,” Cas answers.

“Suit yourself.” Dean says, “But I’m fine.” He pulls the shredded remains of his shorts off, along with his tee shirt and boxers, and dumps them unceremoniously on the floor, heedless of Cas sitting on the bench in front of him. He’s too tired and irritated at the unnecessary coddling to be self-conscious. He pulls the curtain closed behind him firmly and starts the water, standing to one side until the temperature is warm enough. 

“Try not to put the bandage under the spray,” Cas calls, “I’m not sure how waterproof the tape is.”

Dean ignores him, reveling in the feeling of hot water running over his body. He soaps himself up and is shampooing his hair when the shower seems to tip sideways, and he stumbles and cries out, hitting his shoulder against the wall.

“Dean?” Cas’s voice is sharp and worried.

“‘M ok.’ Dean says, “Just a little dizzy,” He leans heavily against the wall as his vision darkens. “Cas—”

He hears Cas stand up and move across the room. The curtain is swept back and Cas bites back a curse.

“OK, let’s get you rinsed off and out of here.”

Dean’s vision is not clearing. He’s hot and lightheaded and feeling dismayingly like he’s going to puke. He sways a little and slides down the wall to collapse in a slumped heap on the shower floor.

Cas reaches over him and turns the shower head so the water isn’t hitting Dean in the face anymore. He feels Cas run his hand through his hair, getting rid of the suds, and directing the water to rinse it. Dean opens his eyes. Cas has shed his tee and shorts and is crouching over him in wet boxers.

“Yeah, we need to get you out of here.”

Dean feels strong arms wrap around his torso and pull him to his feet. As the darkness and nausea recede he’s aware that he’s naked and wet and his back is pressed all up against Cas’s front. Warm water is still cascading over both of them, and a fleeting thought crosses his mind that if it wasn’t for the vertigo and the dull pain in his thigh, this situation would be damn near ideal.

Cas wraps him in a towel and sits him on the bench. His touch is clinical, and Dean’s not sure if that’s good or disappointing. But as Cas stands back up after tucking the towel around Dean’s waist, he has a first-hand view that Cas isn’t as unmoved by the situation as his professional demeanor might suggest. Cas pulls his tee shirt and shorts back on, grinning at Dean when he notices where Dean’s eyes were lingering, but doesn’t say anything as he helps him to his feet.

The cool night air revives Dean and he shakes Cas’s hand off his arm to walk unaided. Back at the guest tent, Cas makes Dean sit and drink some water. When he’s done, Dean stretches out on the bed on his side so Cas can remove the plastic bag from over the bandage. Cas drags the chair over next to the bed and turns on the small lamp. 

Cas’s hand is warm on Dean’s thigh, holding the skin taut so he can peel the surgical tape from his skin. His eyes are intent on what he’s doing and looking at his profile is doing things to Dean. He feels the familiar needy warmth of arousal. He sits up, towel slipping away, as Cas pulls the last of the tape off.

“Cas…” His voice is an entreaty. 

Cas takes one last look at the bandage and raises his eyes to meet Dean’s. His eyes go dark at the lust he sees in Dean’s, and he leans forward to kiss him, lightly at first and then with increasing hunger. Dean lets himself be pushed back on the bed. He’s drowning in sensation. Cas’s lips on his, Cas’s hand on his shoulder, Cas’s thigh pressing painfully against his bandage. In spite of himself, Dean whimpers. Cas mumbles an apology and moves his leg.

Dean grabs his other hand and presses it to his growing erection. He groans when Cas’s hand tightens around his shaft. _Yes. This. This_ is what he wants. _This_ is what’s going to sweep away the fear and the pain and the uncertainty of the last two days. Dean moans into Cas’s mouth as Cas moves his hand, stroking firmly. He rolls his head back against the pillow as Cas trails kisses down his neck, biting gently at the tendon there. He licks along Dean’s collarbone and down across his chest. Dean can't help but close his eyes. Finally feeling something other than pain in his leg, he focuses all his attention on Cas’s lips and tongue and hand, his hips rolling with the movement.

Cas’s hand is suddenly gone, but before Dean can fully protest, it’s replaced by his mouth. Dean’s sure that they probably hear the groan he makes just then over at the mess tent.

“Fuck, Cas...” Dean’s trying so hard not to buck up into Cas’s mouth. Cas is leaning over him, his hand braced on the mattress the other side of Dean. He’s still half seated on the chair, carefully avoiding the wound on Dean’s thigh. He’s facing Dean’s feet, and the angle is incredible, Dean’s cock is pressed against Cas’s tongue as he takes him in deep. His stubble occasionally rasps against Dean’s belly in a prickly counterpoint to the smooth velvet drag of his mouth. 

Dean’s hands are tangled in the sleeping bag while Cas uses his hand to angle Dean’s cock upwards and sinks his mouth down on it again. He picks up speed and the sweet friction has Dean moaning his name, the pleasure inside him rising to a fever pitch.

“Cas, I’m close. I’m really close.” Dean expects him to pull off, He doesn’t expect him to hold Dean’s hips flat against the bed with both hands and take him all the way in. And that’s all she wrote. Dean comes down his throat, stars bursting behind his eyelids. After a minute, the intensity recedes into tiny aftershocks of pleasure, and Cas pulls off slowly, licking his lips. 

Dean turns his head to the side and watches as Cas lies down on the bed beside him, grinning. Dean can’t help but smile, his satisfaction transitioning into fondness. _Oh. He’s in trouble now._ They’re lying there, Dean still breathing hard and about to reach for Cas, when they hear the first noises. 

Car engines first, roaring up to the camp. Then yelling. A woman screaming. And gunshots.


	8. Chapter 8

Cas rolls off the bed instantly. “Stay here,” he orders, and then he’s gone, the door slapping shut behind him. There’s no way in hell Dean is going to cower in the tent with no idea what’s going on. He gets dressed, carefully, and goes to the door of his tent. To the left, he can see down the passageway into the open area where the hospital tents are. He sees a small pickup truck with someone standing in the bed, pointing an assault rifle and shouting in French. There’s more gunfire coming from beyond the truck, and the sharp noise of breaking glass.

He hobbles down the row of tents, ignoring the pain in his leg as best he can. There are armed men coming out of the supply tent, carrying boxes. They’re in fatigues, but not actual army uniforms. _Boko Haram_. Unsure what to do next, and worried about Cas, he makes his way towards the mess tent, stopping as two more men come out of the door about ten yards ahead of him. They have rifles strapped over their shoulders and their arms are full of boxes, their backs to him as they walk away, towards the melée. They stop for a minute and put the boxes down to redistribute the contents. 

Dean can hear the clinking of bottles hitting each other. He shrinks back against the side of the tent, hoping they don’t turn around and see him. They’re speaking in low voices, and as they pass the lit window of one of the tents, Dean can see that the shorter of the two has a stripe of white hair across the back of his head. _Youssef!_ Dean stops himself before he says it out loud. _What’s Youssef doing here? With the insurgents? Is it really him?_ He has to make sure. But the men turn out of sight around the corner before he can get a close look.

Staying in the shadows, he makes his way to the edge of the mess tent. Beyond it is a space for parking vehicles and on the other side are the two hospital tents and the supply tent, arranged in a square with one side open. There are vehicles in the parking area. More armed men are loading boxes out of the supply tent and into the back of a Land Cruiser. Dean can see Gabe, his arm curved protectively around Meg, standing with a group of clinic staff. They’re surrounded by the militants with guns trained on them. _Holy shit_. The man Dean saw standing in the back of the the pickup truck jumps down and walks towards the MSF staff.

He’s tall and thin, and the light from the truck’s headlights picks out his high cheekbones and close-cropped hair. He approaches the group and the gunmen move aside to let him pass. He walks up to Gabe, who moves so that he’s in front of Meg, and starts to speak in English.

“You know who I am.”

Gabe looks at him and says in a voice that sounds like he’s trying hard to rein in his disdain, “Yes. You’re Mashaya. The Walker.”

Mashaya inclines his head. “Exactly. And if you’ll continue to cooperate, we can just load up the rest of the supplies and be on our way without anyone getting hurt.”

Meg interrupts, pulling away from Gabe, “We need those drugs! People come here so we can help them. Chadians. Your own people. Don’t you care at all?”

“Meg!” Gabe grabs her arm again, trying to pull her back, but she’s too angry to be scared.

Mashaya smiles in what looks like genuine amusement, and answers, the echo of his schooling in England evident in his accent, “Of course I care about ‘my own people,’ I care very deeply. In fact, I think that their well-being would be so much more assured if I brought them back a doctor.” He nods to one of his men, who grabs Meg by the arm and starts dragging her off towards the Land Cruiser. She doesn’t go quietly, and Dean can hear her cursing until it’s cut off by the sound of the car door slamming.

_Where the fuck is Cas?_ There’s no way he can do anything to help Meg right now, he’s unarmed and limping, and there are too many armed men where Gabriel and the rest of the medical staff are corralled. Dean turns and makes his way down the passage where he saw the man who looked like Youssef and the other man carrying boxes from the mess tent. He’s going to find them and determine if it is Youssef or not. The implications of a member of Field Security International being part of the Boko Haram are pretty frightening. 

Dean moves as quickly as he can, having to duck into someone’s quarters once to avoid being seen by one of the militants. He’s behind one of the hospital tents when he sees movement just outside of the area lit by the sodium lights of the camp. Keeping to the shadows, he moves along the wall of the hospital tent and, using a dumpster marked for medical waste for cover, peers around to see who it is. 

Well, good news is he’s found Cas. Bad news, and the thing that’s stopping him from calling out, is that Cas is talking to Youssef. And it’s definitely Youssef, Dean recognizes his voice. They are talking in low, urgent tones. Dean’s too far away to make out what they’re saying, but he can tell they’re speaking French. Neither seem angry, but there’s a tense atmosphere to their discussion, and a familiarity that indicates they’re not strangers to each other. As if to back up that impression, Cas pats Youssef’s shoulder before they walk away in different directions: Youssef heading back to where Mashaya is, and Cas skirting the edges of the camp, heading in the general direction of the mess tent and the guest quarters. 

_Youssef is Boko Haram. Cas was talking to him. Is Cas involved with Boko Haram?_ Dean remembers the conversation he had with Youssef in Faya-Largeau: _The vaccination clinic was in Koro Toro a month ago, and a girl disappeared. Then the clinic goes to Gouro. A day later two girls go missing_. Two and two are starting to add up and Dean really doesn’t like the look of four. 

He works his way through this like an engineering problem. One: Youssef is Boko Haram. He has evidence of that with his own eyes. Two: Youssef tried to stop him from associating with Cas. Which would make sense if Cas was somehow involved in Boko Haram activities — scouting for schoolgirls while running the vaccination clinics — Youssef wouldn’t want any extra scrutiny of his associate. Three: the men who beat Cas up in Faya-Largeau had yelled something about girls as they ran off. Cas wasn’t poaching anyone’s girlfriend or sister, Dean realizes, the attack was on someone suspected of helping to kidnap girls. Young girls. Four: Cas had recognized that it was Boko Haram after them in the labyrinth. Although Dean can’t figure out how the fact that they had been shooting at Cas fits in. A falling out with Mashaya? But what he does know is enough. He feels sick to his stomach. 

Dean waits another minute, and then cuts down the same passageway he’d come through. If Cas is heading back to the guest quarters, Dean wants to be back there to find out what the fuck is going on. 


	9. Chapter 9

Dean gets back to the guest tent to find Cas already there. He’s pacing around, agitated, and when he sees Dean, his whole body seems to relax.

“Dean, thank God. Where were you? I told you to stay here.” 

“Like I was going to stay here.” Dean’s voice is cold, and Cas looks at him uncertainly. 

“Where did you go?”

“Where do you think? I went after you.” Dean looks at Cas, anger warring with hurt on his face. “Didn’t find you right away though. Nope, didn’t catch up with you until you were out back of the hospital, talking with Youssef.”

Cas stops dead at Dean’s use of the name. 

“Let me tell you I was pretty shocked to find out that my security escort is a member of Boko Haram. You know, the group that tried to kill me yesterday? Kind of a big conflict of interest, But that’s nothing next to finding out you’re involved too.”

“Dean,” Cas starts, but Dean keeps right on talking. He’s getting angrier the more he talks and he’s not stopping until he gets it all out.

“But you know, it makes sense now. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out. Everywhere the vaccination clinic went, girls disappeared. Fuck, Youssef told me about it himself to try to keep me away from you. Girls gone missing in Koro Toro. In Gouro.” 

The thought that had been floating just below his consciousness for days finally surfaces. “And Aozi. There was an attack and a kidnapping there the night you stayed with me in Faya-Largeau, Victor told me about it. It’s why we didn’t go north to Ounianga Kébir. The next morning you warned me away from going north, said you’d just been up in Aozi, things weren’t safe.” He gives a humorless laugh. “Yeah, I’ll say.”

Cas looks angry now. “Dean, you can’t believe I had anything to do with kidnapping schoolgirls.”

“Oh, but I can. The evidence is there. Tell me, were you working the clinics in Toro Koro and Gouro?” Dean’s feeling stupid now, as well as angry. 

“Yes. It’s my fucking job, Dean. I work all the measles clinics. And so does Meg.”

“Did you get close to me so I wouldn’t notice Youssef’s being places he shouldn’t? You two really should communicate better. He’s been busy trying to warn me off you. I bet my showing up in Faya after those guys attacked you was super convenient.” His voice drips sarcasm.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Cas is furious now, too. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would I help kidnap girls? I’m a doctor. I help people.”

“Then why were you talking to Youssef? What were you talking about?”

“I can’t tell you that. You need to stay out of this.”

“Of course you can’t. Because there’s no explanation that’s going to work now that I’ve seen you with Youssef.” He turns his back on Cas and starts rummaging through his duffel.

“What are you doing?” 

“Something I should have done before I went chasing after you like I care what happens to you. I’m calling for help.” He finds the satellite phone and powers it up. “Victor will know who to contact.”

“Dean. Stop.” Cas’s voice is very calm. “I can’t let you make that call.”

Dean shoots him a look of pure poison. “Yeah? Try to stop me.”

Cas sighs and moves closer. “I’m sorry about this,” he says, and kicks Dean in the left leg. Just below the bandage.

Dean drops to the floor gasping, his leg flaming up in agony. Calmly, Cas bends and picks up the phone, putting it in his pocket and heading for the door. “Goodbye, Dean.”

Dean isn’t sure how long he lies on the floor waiting for the pain and nausea to subside. Eventually, he sits up and grabs his watch off the desk. He can’t be sure but it seems like the whole insurgent attack has taken less than forty-five minutes. Three quarters of an hour ago, Dean was lying with Cas, basking in the afterglow. He puts those thoughts out of his head. The pain of them is surprisingly sharp. _How could he have been so wrong about Cas?_

Well, he’s not staying in the tent. Maybe there’s something he can do to help Gabe or Meg, or maybe he can get to the admin tent and see if there’s a satellite phone there before Cas takes that one out of play too. Once more, Dean limps out of the the guest quarters and turns towards the hospital tents, and the admin office beyond them. He stops before he gets to the parking area because Mashaya and his armed men still surround the MSF staff, one stands with his back to Dean, blocking the passageway to the parking area.

He can hear engines starting up, they must be almost finished stripping the camp of goods, so going to see if he can spring Meg is out of the question. The admin tent is a better target anyway. He creeps closer to the entry of the parking area as the armed man leaves the passageway and heads for the vehicles. But he moves too soon. Mashaya looks over and Dean instinctively ducks out of sight, but it’s too late, he’s been seen. Mashaya barks an order in clipped Arabic, and the insurgent turns and comes back into the passageway, gun pointing at Dean, and ushers him out into the open area.

“Who are you?” Mashaya asks in English.

Dean opens his mouth to answer, but before he can, Gabe speaks.

“He’s a doctor. A new guy, just rotated in.” Dean remembers what Cas had said about oil workers being ransom material, but the doctors being left pretty much alone.

Mashaya looks at Dean, taking in his dishevelled appearance and the edge of the bandage visible at the hem of his shorts.

“I don’t think so.” He smiles at Dean, but it’s not a reassuring smile. ‘You don’t look like a doctor, and it’s a poor doctor indeed who allows himself to be injured like that. Tell me,” he continues, conversationally, “what happened to your leg?”

“One of you bastards shot me yesterday,“ Dean says, with as insouciant a grin as he can manage, “but it’s just a scratch.” Dean knows he should shut up at this point, but smart decisions don’t seem to be at a premium tonight, so he keeps going. “It’s a poor soldier indeed who shoots at an unarmed man running away from him and only grazes him.” Gabe closes his eyes and shakes his head. Benny, standing next to him, smiles despite himself, and tries to hide it.

Unexpectedly, Mashaya starts to laugh. ”Well, we’ll have plenty of time to chat about the quality of my soldiers later. You can ride with the doctor.” He motions with his head and the man holding Dean’s arm pulls him towards the car where Meg is. .


	10. Chapter 10

The Land Cruiser door closes with an expensive-sounding thunk behind Dean. Meg looks over from where she’s leaning against the opposite window. Her wrists, like Deans’, are secured with zip ties. She still looks mad enough to kill, but smiles at him and quotes _Die Hard_ with some bravado, “Dean. Welcome to the party, pal.” 

He tries to smile reassuringly back at her. “Hey, come to LA they said, it’ll be fun they said.” 

“Oh my God, you amateur, it’s "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs...‘“ Her voice is steady, but there’s a faint hint of hysteria present that worries him.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Don’t you _dare_ fucking patronize me, I drank you under the table at the Bucket, remember? I’m a doctor, so they’re not going to hurt me.” She stops and considers for a moment, “Probably.”

He shifts uneasily on the seat, trying to get into a more comfortable position.

“Your leg bothering you?” Meg asks.

“Yeah, it was doing fine until Cas kicked me. And took my phone so I couldn’t call for help.”

“Clarence? I don’t believe you,” she says flatly.

“Yeah, well here we are, in a Boko Haram car, instead of being rescued by the army, or whoever I could have got a hold of on the sat phone.”

She chews on her lip, looking troubled. “That’s not the Cas I know. He’d never have anything to do with Boko Haram or kidnapping girls. Dean, he spends his time vaccinating them so they’ll be healthy.”

“And apparently scouting out which ones are gonna be easiest to grab. Meg, I _saw_ him. Not half an hour ago, talking with one of the soldiers, while the others were ransacking the supply tent.” He stops and sighs. “I didn’t want to believe it either, Meg.” She looks up, surprised at the misery that’s crept into his voice.

Before she can say anything else, the front doors of the car open, and two militants get in. Neither of them are Youssef. The car starts up and they pull away from Fada, following the other vehicles in Mashaya’s convoy: four Land Cruisers and the pick up truck. They head into the desert and Dean can tell from the stars in the night sky that they’re heading northwest. Towards the mountains and the Boko Haram strongholds.

They travel for hours, and it’s not the most comfortable Dean’s ever been in his life. His leg is throbbing, but it’s a small mercy that their hands are cuffed in front of them and not behind. Meg looks like she’s sleeping and Dean’s vaguely resentful that she’s relaxed enough to fall asleep. He’s caught in a maelstrom of unwanted thoughts about Cas and is worried what Mashaya is going to do to him and Meg when they get where they’re going. Meg shifts in her sleep and slumps over towards him. He catches her with his cuffed hands and rearranges her so she’s sleeping with her head on his lap. The warmth of another person is reassuring. He drifts off too.

***

Dean wakes when the car comes to a stop. It’s still dark. Meg wakes, and sits up. In the headlights Dean can see several animal-hide tents set up in a small flat area ringed by high rocky crags. He turns and looks out the rear-view window to see Mashaya’s truck pass them thenstop inside the encampment. The twisting route of a dry waterway winds down and out of sight behind the car. They’re in the Tibesti Mountains -- a long way from Fada. Dean looks at his watch. It’s nearly 4 a.m.

The driver and passenger get out and open the back doors. Meg and Dean are pulled out. They stand close together in the light from the car headlights. The men start unloading the vehicles and Dean can see Youssef among them. In the background is the steady grumble of a generator. Lights strung on a wire between two poles illuminate the small valley. The men empty the vehicles, carrying boxes to the tent next to the generator. Probably a refrigerator in there for the drugs, Dean thinks.

Mashaya walks over from the pick up and stands in front of them. “It’s late, and my men need sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” He gestures to one of the men who takes Meg by the arm and pulls her off towards the largest of the tents.

“Where are you taking her?” Dean asks, anger evident in his voice.

“Don’t worry, the good doctor is going to bed down with the girls.” _So this_ is _where the girls are being held._ “You will have other quarters.” A second man leads Dean to another tent and pushes him inside. There’s no light. But he can tell by feel that there are carpets covering the sand floor, and there are boxes taking up maybe half of the floor space.

“Can you at least take off the cuffs?” he asks the man, first in English and then in French, but the man ignores him and leaves the tent, only to return in a few minutes with a canteen of water. Dean could really, really use a beer, but he’s heartened by the thought that if they’re making sure he has water, they’re probably not going to shoot him. He can hear the man outside the tent and soon smells a cigarette burning. _So. Guard duty._ He’s not going to be able to sneak out.

He holds the canteen between his legs so that he can use his hands to take the lid off and drink. And then he tries to make himself comfortable on his side on the carpet, and attempts to sleep.

Thoughts of Cas keep him awake. _How could he fall for someone who could be part of something so evil? Stealing girls from their families and forcing them into marriage with men they didn’t know?_ True, he’d known Cas less than a week, but he'd developed feelings that were about more than just sex. It seems their shared experiences in the labyrinth: the kiss, being on the run for their lives, and him getting shot have accelerated Dean’s feelings. Thank God he didn’t get any further involved. That last memory of Cas leaving the tent while he lay on the floor is seared into his brain. Nonetheless, Dean realizes he’s a lot more involved than he wants to be. It’s hard to tell what’s hurting him more: his leg or thinking about Cas.

His thought are interrupted by the noise of conversation outside. The guard and a female voice. He can’t make out what language they’re speaking, The door to the tent is pushed aside and a young girl comes in carrying a tray with a plate of food and a pill bottle. In her other hand, she’s got a battery-powered lantern, which she switches on. Dean recognizes her. It’s the girl Cas was talking to at the bar in Fada. She sees the recognition in his eyes and quickly puts a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet. In a loud enough voice to carry out to the guard, she says in French, “Here is some food, I’m sorry I can’t untie your hands. Here are some painkillers for your leg. Let me open them for you.” He thanks her in a loud voice, and then drops the volume and asks her name.

“My name is Issa.” She keeps her French slow so he can follow. “We don’t have time to speak now. I will talk to you in the morning. Try to sleep, you will need to be alert.” She leaves and Dean tries to do what she says. 

Some hours later Dean is woken when the guard comes into the tent. He sits up groggily.   
“Viens avec moi,’ the man says. _Come with me._ He’s brought to where Mashaya sits on the tailgate of the pickup, cleaning his gun in the late morning sunlight.

“So, let’s try again. Who are you?”

Seeing as he’s already a hostage, there’s no reason to lie about himself now. “I’m Dean Winchester. I’m an engineer for Exxon.”

“American. Good. Well, Mr. Winchester, you’ll be accepting our hospitality for a while, until we can make contact with your employers to arrange a bit of a money transfer. Habbané here will remove the zip tie. So long as you behave, there’s no reason to put it back on. You may move about the camp, but the only tent you will have access to is the one in which you spent last night.

“Where’s Meg?” Dean asks. 

“Doctor Masters is examining the girls. I’m sure she’ll be out soon.” He turns back to his gun. It’s a dismissal. Dean holds out his hands for the guard to cut the zip ties off, then walks back to the supply tent, rubbing his wrists.

Meg finds him in his tent a few minutes later. He hugs her tightly for a long moment.

“Are you okay?” he asks when he’s let her go.

She musters a smile. “All things being equal, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.”

“We’re really gonna have to watch that movie again, together, when we get out of this.” Dean says.

“They’re all here,” Meg says, changing the subject, “all eight of the girls who’ve been kidnapped in the last month.”

“Is one of them named Issa?” Dean asks.

“No, Issa belongs to the camp, she’s related to one of Mashaya’s soldiers, a granddaughter, I think. She’s a smart girl. She was helping me examine and treat the girls, and she has some medical knowledge. Dean, we can’t let these girls be taken to Sudan. They need to get back to their families.”

“Are they okay?”

“Medically? Yes. They’re in good physical shape. No one’s abused them, if that’s what you’re thinking. Mentally? No. They’re scared and they want to go home. At least they have each other for company.”

“Are they confined to the tent?” Dean asks.

“Most of the time, it seems,” Meg says, “They were let out for some exercise earlier. I’m surprised you didn’t wake up, one of the guards gave them a soccer ball, and they kicked it around for a while. It seemed to lift their spirits.”

“Painkillers knocked me out. A helicopter could have landed outside the tent and it wouldn’t have woken me.”

They leave the tent and start walking around the encampment. Dean is counting militants. In addition to Mashaya, he can see ten soldiers working at various tasks. Youssef isn’t one of them. _So at least twelve men_ Dean thinks. Under his breath, Dean tells Meg that he wants to check out the perimeter of the camp. They stroll towards where the vehicles are parked, near the entrance to the camp, and an armed man walks out from behind one of the cars to block their way. Dean’s able to get a look at the approach to the perched valley, a twisting rudimentary road.

Issa and an older woman are in a tent with one of the walls opened wide, the flap tied to a roof brace. There are pans of food cooking on a hot plate inside. Issa catches his eye when she leaves the tent to stir at something boiling in a pot suspended over a small fire, and he remembers her promise to speak to him.

Dean and Meg continue walking, slowly due to Dean’s leg. He’s sure that his injury is the main reason he’s been given the run of the camp, escape would be pretty hard when he can’t run. The rocky walls that surround the valley are steep and formed of crumbling sandstone. They’re almost uniformly high, too, except for one place at the back of the valley where a split in the rock runs up at an angle from the valley bottom, a fault that has split the ridgeline into a sharp notch. There’s a small patch of gravel and stones at the bottom, evidence that it becomes a watercourse during the rainy season. Dean tries not to be obvious about checking it out. It’s kind of steep, but it definitely looks climbable. He files that away for future reference before he and Meg head back towards the tent where he spent the night. 

Despite the painkillers, his leg is hurting again. There’s a bench next to the door, for the guard, he figures, and they sit there watching the camp. The soldiers are helping themselves to a noon meal the older woman has laid out on a makeshift table beside the cooking tent. Catching sight of them, Issa fills two plates and and brings them over on a tray to where Dean and Meg are sitting. Meg takes her plate with a smile of thanks.

“I think I’m going to take this to go,” she says to Dean, getting up, “I should check on the girls.” Dean watches her walk away

As Issa hands Dean his plate, she whispers to him quickly in French, “I only have a moment. You need to be ready. The army will come tonight, for the girls, for you and Dr. Meg.”

“How do you know?” he whispers back.

“My grandfather,“ Issa answers, dropping a bottle of water on the ground. As she crouches down to pick it up, she continues in a low voice, “Mashaya thinks that he is loyal to him. But he is army. My grandfather is here in the camp, he arrived with Mashaya last night and radioed the location. The army will come tonight.”

“Which one is your grandfather?”

Issa stands up, and brushes the dust from the hem of her dress. “He’s older and thin. He has white hair on the back of his head. His name is Youssef. Youssef Oueddei.”


	11. Chapter 11

Dean fights to keep his expression neutral as Issa walks back to the kitchen tent. _Youssef is army?_ He starts to eat mechanically, his thoughts spinning wildly. _How many hats is Youssef wearing? Security escort. Insurgent. Chadian army. Which one was he wearing when he met with Cas? Does this mean Cas isn’t in league with Boko Haram?_ His heart leaps. _Whoa, slow down, let’s think this through. Either Cas still thinks Youssef is Boko Haram and is part of the kidnappings, or Cas knows he’s army and has some other motive. But why did he kick me? Why did he stop me from calling for help? Those are not the actions of someone trying to help the girls._

Dean puts those thoughts aside and tries to figure out what to do next. Issa said that the army would show up tonight. Sunset is just past six. That means six at the earliest, and maybe not ‘til after midnight when the militants would be expected to be sleeping. Okay. Next thing. Let Meg know so she can get the girls ready, and keep them out of harm’s way if the raid gets out of hand. He walks slowly over to the large tent that houses the girls. One of Mashaya’s men is standing outside and moves to block Dean’s progress. 

“I want to see the doctor,” he says in French to the man. The man doesn’t respond, and blocks the doorway with his rifle. Meg must have heard him, and she comes out, pushing the flap and the man’s rifle out of the way with her arm.

“Let me see to my patient,” she snaps. Dean is happy to see she’s her usual short-tempered self. She walks Dean over to the bench in front of ‘his’ tent and sits him down, gingerly peeling the surgical tape from around Dean’s wound. “Yeah, you need the dressing changed.” She returns a moment later with a first-aid kit and starts to work. While she’s changing the bandage, he tells her in a low voice about the rescue. 

“Thank God,” she says. “I’ll keep the girls in the tent and keep them lying down, hopefully out of the way of any bullets that might be flying around”. She finishes with the bandage and squeezes his hand before heading back to her charges.

Dean spends the next few hours thinking hard. If he were going to raid the encampment, he’d send troops around to attack from the back of the valley to distract the insurgents before launching a frontal assault. Pin them down with their attention focused away from the road up from the desert and then come in hard with as many troops as possible. The problem with that is he doesn’t know if Youssef has told the raiding party where the girls are being held. The last thing he wants is for them or Meg to get hurt. He sees Youssef across the camp, talking to Mashaya, but the man keeps his distance from Dean. 

It’s the longest afternoon of Dean’s life. Even getting stalked through the labyrinth seemed to go faster. He’s jumpy and his leg hurts and no one’s offering him any more painkillers. He drags the bench away from the shade near the door of the tent, to the side, motioning at the sun when one of the guards comes over to see what he’s doing, and he sits and waits, pretending to doze in the sunshine while keeping his eye on the back wall of the perched valley and the notch in the ridgeline that would make the most sense for the first wave. 

Just before sunset, Dean sees a flash of movement south of the notch. It’s hard to see, as the rays of the sun sitting just above the horizon are creating a lot of shadow. Dean sits up slowly and stretches, hiding his interest as much as possible. _There_. He sees it again. Someone is moving along the ridgeline towards the break. Dean tracks the movement. There are two men there, just out of sight beside the notch that marks the long crack in the cliff face. Dean gets a glimpse, one’s in fatigues, a soldier. The other is Cas.

Dean is almost dizzy with relief and the knot in his chest starts to loosen. _He’s with the army. Thank fucking God._

Dean turns and looks out at the camp. None of the insurgents are aware of anything going on. There’s a guard posted near the vehicles, but his attention is on four others sitting on the ground playing cards. Dean turns on the bench so he’s facing the notch. Cas moves from the shelter of the rock wall and meets Dean’s eyes. 

Cas’s face is serious. He stands so that he’s mostly in shadow, but from where Dean’s sitting, he can see him clearly. Cas signs something, his hand in a fist and his thumb sliding down his jaw. A memory pops into his head. _Eileen laughing as he tries to mimic her hand movements, Alex is way more fluent at American Sign Language, even at four years old. “NO uncle Dean. Like this!”_ Cas is using ASL. He’s making the sign for girl. 

_He wants to know where the girls are_. Dean tries to remember the sign for _big_ , and after a moment it comes to him. He has no idea if there’s a sign for _tent,_ but he remembers how to fingerspell, so he signs back as best he can. Cas gives him a small smile and a thumbs up, and Dean’s stomach flips. _Oh man, he’s got it bad._ Cas spells something else out. Five. Minutes. Dean nods and Cas ducks back behind the ridgeline.

Dean decides to do what he can to help Cas and the soldiers during those five minutes. He limps across the camp to where Mashaya is standing talking to Youssef and another man.  
“HEY.”

They stop talking and turn to look at him. Mashaya looks annoyed. Youssef’s face is impassive. The other man swings his rifle off his shoulder at the belligerent tone in Dean’s voice.

“How long are you gonna hold Meg and me for? Have you even contacted anyone about a ransom?” Dean gets right up in Mashaya’s face. The four men playing cards over by the vehicles get to their feet.

“Mr. Winchester,” Mashaya says, his voice cold, “I would advise you not to speak to me like that.”

“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do? Get one of your men to shoot me again?” Dean’s heart is pounding, but he carries on. _It’s been what, three minutes? Four, maybe?_ “I can’t believe this bullshit!” he yells. The man with the rifle steps forward and grabs Dean’s arm and pulls him away from Mashaya. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.

Shots ring out from the ridge. Youssef sprints off towards the tent that the girls and Meg are in. Mashaya grabs the rifle from the man holding Dean and fires at the soldiers, backing away towards the shelter of the vehicles. Dean runs as best he can and ducks behind one of the Land Cruisers, away from the shooting. He can see soldiers coming down the split in the rock of the back wall, five or six of them, their boots starting miniature avalanches of dust and pebbles. The ones already at ground level are using the tents and fuel oil barrels for cover and shooting at the insurgents.One of the card players goes down, clutching his shoulder. A fusillade of small-arms fire makes Dean duck further down. He feels a strong sense of deja vu like he’s back in the labyrinth. If he makes it out of this, he’s gonna buy Victor an apology bottle of scotch.

His eyes are drawn back to the split in the rock. Cas is sliding down feet first, unarmed, using both hands to keep himself upright. _Cas! Dammit, what the fuck are you doing? Stay hidden. You’re not a soldier for fuck’s sake._ Cas hits the ground and takes off running towards the big tent that holds the girls. _Of course. Meg and the girls._

Mashaya stands up from where he was crouched behind the car. He swings the rifle around and trains it on Cas. And it’s like time slows down for Dean, everything fades away — the sound of the gunshots, the bullets splitting the air, the yelling — and all he can hear is the beating of his heart. The sky is amber, still reflecting light from the sun that’s dropped below the horizon, and he sees the barrel of the rifle silhouetted against it, pointing at Cas. He takes a deep breath, and heedless of the pain in his leg, springs up from where he’s crouching and before he knows it, he’s airborne. 

He tackles Mashaya and they go down together, Dean trying frantically to wrestle the gun away from him, to keep him from hurting Cas. It’s sloppy and brutal, Mashaya punching at Dean to get him to let go, and Dean hanging onto the rifle with all his strength. Mashaya’s slowly winning, rocking Dean’s head back with a punch that Dean feels as a starburst of pain, and the steady drip of blood from his nose. Dean desperately tightens his hands on the barrel of the gun, scared that Mashaya is going to use it on him if he lets go.

He’s almost out of strength when the bubble of silence passes and the sounds of the raid flood back in. He can hear the gunfire again. And the roar of vehicles coming up the road to the valley. _Finally. The cavalry’s here It's about goddamn time._ A sand-coloured armoured vehicle with a front-mounted gun is coming up the dry river bed towards the camp, followed by four or five jeeps. The insurgents start shooting back at the army cars. The big gun on the armoured vehicle fires and the oil drums next to the kitchen tent erupt in a fountain of oil. 

Mashaya’s distracted by the noise, and Dean twists the gun from his hands and stands up. Mashaya surges to his feet, but before he can launch another attack, Dean swings the gun by the barrel like he’s batting for the Royals and hits Mashaya in the side of the head with the stock. Mashaya collapses on the dusty ground, and Dean, adrenaline receding, slides down the car door he’s been leaning against to sit heavily on the ground beside the insurgent commander’s still form. 

Dean looks over at him and says, “It’s a poor warlord indeed who lets himself be taken out by a fucking non-combatant.” He giggles to himself, a little hysterically. _Damn, I’m funny_. His leg is throbbing again, and he winces, letting his head fall back against the car. It’s silent now, the gunfire has stopped.

“Dean!” Cas is there suddenly. He crouches next to Dean. “Are you okay?”

“Just peachy.” Dean grins at him. “What’s going on?” 

Cas helps Dean up and they look around. In the length of time it took for Dean and Mashaya to fight over the gun, the army has taken control. The threat of the big gun and the superior numbers of soldiers have ended the fighting. Army troops are rounding up the insurgents. Meg and Youssef are leading the girls out of the tent, Issa is with them.

Cas examines Mashaya. 

“Is he dead? Did I kill him?” Dean asks.

“Nah, he’ll live. He’s going to have a headache, probably a concussion too.”

“Well boo fucking hoo. He was gonna shoot you, Cas.”

“And you took him on, unarmed.” Cas is looking at him, shaking his head, a fond smile on his face. “What am I gonna do with you?” Dean’s about to answer, but Meg comes running up and throws herself into Cas’s arms and hugs him tight.

“Are the girls all okay?” Cas asks, when she lets him go. “I was coming to help, but got pinned down. Too many bullets.”

“They’re fine, she answers. “We spent most of the day lying on the floor, but we’re all fine.” She hugs Dean for good measure. “Thanks for the heads up.”

Youssef and Issa come up next, and Youssef’s smiling. The first smile Dean’s seen on his face. He claps Cas on his shoulder, and Cas returns the gesture. “I’m sorry I lied to you, but it had to remain secret,” Youssef says to Dean. “Are you ready to leave? We have loaded the prisoners and the girls and we’re ready to go.”

Now that the action is over, Dean is tired and sore. Cas helps him into one of Mashaya’s Land Cruisers and, just like after he was shot at the labyrinth, makes him comfortable in the back seat and hands him some painkillers and a bottle of water. The convoy of vehicles pulls out of the perched valley and heads south towards Fada. Dean desperately wants to talk to Cas, but he’s riding up front, next to the Chadian soldier driving the car, and so Dean resigns himself to waiting until they’re alone, and closes his eyes, letting the motion of the car lull him to sleep.

***

Dean sleeps on and off on the way back to Fada. They’ve barely pulled into the parking area at the clinic when Gabe opens the door of the car to pull Cas out and hug him, before running over to where Meg is getting out of another vehicle. She gets a longer hug, Dean notes with some amusement. Peter and Benny and the rest of the staff are there too, and it’s a happy reunion, but Dean begs off the celebratory drinks and heads to the guest tent.

He lies on the bed waiting for Cas to show up, and tries not to think about what they were doing the last time they were together in here. He doesn’t want to be distracted before he gets some answers. Barely ten minutes pass before Cas pushes open the door to the tent, carrying two beers.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” Dean answers, sitting up. 

Cas pulls the chair over to the bed and sits down. “I really don’t know what to say to you right now,” Dean says, looking at him. “Thanks for rescuing me, I guess. But I really gotta ask why you kicked me and stole my phone. That kind of worked against me following my instinct to trust you.”

“I know. I can’t fault you for that.” Cas is having a hard time meeting Dean’s eyes. “I’m sorry I kicked your leg. I had to stop you from making that call. We needed to wait for Youssef to send the coordinates of the camp where the girls were being held. If you’d made that call, the army would have had to respond to the hospital, and I couldn’t risk that.” He looks at Dean, finally, and hands him one of the bottles. “This was an undercover operation. We needed them to get away so that Youssef could get to the camp and send us the location. He hadn’t been there before, and didn’t know where it was.”

Dean takes a sip of beer and then peels at the label. “I thought you were with them. I thought you and Youssef were collaborating with Boko Haram.”

“I couldn’t tell you the truth. I couldn’t risk anyone finding out that I knew Youssef and that he’s army. I’ve been working with the Chadian army for six months trying to find out where the camps are that the rebels have been using to hide the girls. Asking questions when I was travelling for vaccine clinics.” 

“How did you get involved?”

“I met Issa and Youssef at a vaccination clinic. Two of Issa’s cousins had been kidnapped from a village in the north. Youssef realized that I could be useful. I could travel around. Ask questions.” He stops and takes a drink. “That’s what I was doing in Albert’s in Abéché. Talking to some Canadian roughnecks who had seen jeeps carrying militants and young girls near the oilfields. I was looking for intel, but one of them got the wrong impression of why I was asking. Didn’t like my interest in the insurgents, thought I was on their side.” Cas smiles, “And there you were, butting in, trying to help where you weren’t wanted.”

“Do you want me now?” Dean asks, looking at him.

“I think you know the answer to that,” Cas says, his eyes dark. Dean’s not ready to let him off the hook yet. And there’s more he needs to know.

“How is Youssef a member of the Chad army and a Field Security bodyguard?”

“With his military background, Field snapped him up,” Cas says, leaning back. “He told them he had left the army. Working for Field gave him the opportunity to travel around Chad and Libya. Then he went to Mashaya and offered his services to the Boko Haram to locate foreigners for ransom kidnappings. I was the intermediary between Youssef and his commanding officer. No one could see him with a member of the army.”

Dean thinks for a minute. “So. Who chased us through the labyrinth? Who shot me?”

Cas grimaces. “That was my fault, I think. I asked too many questions in Aozi. There were some Boko Haram there who didn’t like me asking about the girls, figured I was too nosy. Mashaya sent men after me, either to get rid of me or just scare me off. They probably followed us from camp that morning. You were collateral damage. Wrong place at the wrong time.” Cas reaches across and takes Dean’s hand. “If it’s any consolation, I feel way worse about that than I do about kicking you.”

Dean runs his thumb over Cas’s knuckles and then tugs at his hand, pulling Cas over and onto the bed with him. Cas grins and lies down beside Dean. He turns his head to kiss him, but Dean moves his face out of the way. He’s got more questions, dammit, and he’s not letting himself get distracted until every last one is answered.

“Why did you meet with Issa in the Bucket?”

Cas sighs, and continues, seemingly resigned to the interrogation. “Youssef needed to let me know that all the girls were being moved in the next two days from different locations to one camp, and he’d try to get me the information to pass on to his commanding officer. He couldn’t be seen with me, and he couldn’t risk you seeing him talking to me, so he sent Issa to the Bucket with the message.” 

“When I saw you talking to Youssef the night of the raid, that was worse than getting kicked.” 

“Dean, I didn’t want to leave you alone in here, especially after what had just happened between us, but I needed to talk to him to find out what was going on. He told me he’d be going to the new camp with Mashaya and would be able to transmit the location. I know how it must have looked.”

‘Not gonna lie, Cas, it looked really bad.” 

“When you got dragged out of the alleyway and you mouthed off to Mashaya, I’ve never felt so helpless. There was nothing I could do to rescue you, and I had to reach my army contact to let them know Youssef was going to radio them the camp’s location.” He pulls Dean over so Dean’s head is resting on his chest. Dean doesn’t argue. Cas tightens his arm around Dean. “Watching them leave with you and Meg was the worst time of my life. As soon as Youssef radioed, we left. We had all the vehicles and weapons ready.”

“How did you get the army to let you come on the raid?” Dean’s not snuggling into Cas’s chest. He’s not. And he’ll sue anyone who says he is.

“I told them they might need a doctor for the girls, didn’t really give them a chance to say no.” Cas brushes the hair away from Dean’s forehead, an echo of their night together in the desert. “I couldn’t wait here, I had to go with them and find you.”

“I’m really glad you’re not Boko Haram, Cas. I’m pretty sure that’d be a dealbreaker in a boyfriend.”

Cas laughs. “I really am sorry about your leg. I didn’t want to hurt you but, newsflash, you’re kind of stubborn, and it was the only thing I could think of that would stop you. Good thing stubbornness isn’t a dealbreaker in a boyfriend.”

Dean reaches up and kisses Cas. It’s soft and quick, but it holds the promise of heat. “Well, if you really feel bad about my leg, you could always kiss it better.” 

“Oh really? I think after last time we were on this bed, it’s your turn to kiss my....”

“Leg?” Dean grins.

Cas arches an eyebrow. “Oh I don’t think so. That’s not what I’m thinking at all.”

Dean is still laughing when Cas rolls on top of him and kisses him.

There’s a knock at the door, and Gabe’s voice comes through loud and clear, “I hope you boys are having fun. I’m just gonna leave some condoms out here for ya. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Fuck off, Gabe,” Cas yells, but he’s giggling.

“Cas,” Dean says, between placing kisses along his jawline.

“What?” 

“Your brother? Could be a dealbreaker.”


End file.
